Although there is no actual documentary evidence, it seems probable and is generally assumed that Meyrink’s arrest was instigated by the two army officers involved in the dispute, in collusion with a police officer. It was either an act of revenge on the part of the officers or a way of rendering Meyrink hors de combat — or both. It was greeted in some parts of the press with the kind of response that would lead to an expensive libel action today; a newspaper article of 1927 on the case even suggests that the rumours about Meyrink’s actions were deliberately leaked to the press, presumably from official sources (see the reference to ‘statements from the authorities’ in one of the articles quoted below). The report in Bohemia quoted above continued:
That Gustav Meyer’s financial situation was not exactly sound was at least known to those who had to resort to distraint against him and only managed to recover their money with great difficulty or not at all. It happened more than once that Meyer, in order to conceal the fact that he did not even have a few stocks and shares, banknotes or coins for his window display, simply had the window repaired… He naturally needed large funds to finance his normal lifestyle and he was truly excellent at acquiring these, if not always by means of pure, honest banking business. Gustav Meyer was a ‘spiritualist’ and that explains why he had many women among his depositors. A horde of his agents travelled round Bohemia persuading credulous people to entrust their money to banker Meyer. They were told he was the son of a sovereign, his business was the leading Christian bank in Prague and his sole aim was to help the poor through skilful speculations… In all this Meyer was very cautious in his choice of customers; he sought them among the kind of people of whom he knew that for the sake of their name they would rather lose all their money than take legal action against him, in order to avoid trouble with the police and the courts.
All accounts name the key figure in the accusations that led to Meyrink’s imprisonment on suspicion of fraud as a senior police officer called Olic. According to the writer and journalist, Egon Erwin Kisch, who, together with Paul Leppin, is one of the main sources for this, in his appeal against the decision in the libel case brought by the two officers, Meyrink suggested there had been some kind of collusion between one of the officers and Olic. In the libel trial there had been suggestions that some of Meyrink’s bank dealings were rather dubious and Olic used this to instigate the investigation. Some sources also claim that Olic fancied the woman who later became Meyrink’s second wife, Mena Bernt, who was appearing as a singer in the café chantant of a Prague hotel. It is interesting, though entirely irrelevant, that Guillaume Apollinaire, in a piece called ‘Le passant de Prague’ (The Passer-by in Prague) set in March 1902, says that ‘the ground floor of the hotel I had been told about was occupied by a café chantant’.19 Could he have observed Mena singing there?
Meyrink was kept in prison for the two and a half months the investigation lasted. Kisch claims that three hundred witnesses were heard. All sorts of accusations were made: people who had put their money in Meyrink’s bank could not get it back; he used his customers’ stocks and shares for his own speculations, and, of course, that he used his occult powers to influence customers. Another accusation, that he claimed to be the son of Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to a search of his apartment.
There are also stories of bribed witnesses. Leppin says a Hungarian was put forward to claim he had deposited a share certificate with Meyrink, but when he asked for it back, Meyrink claimed never to have had it. Another version is that it was a woman who had deposited a security with Meyrink, which had disappeared. When asked for the serial number, she could not remember it and when asked to describe the shape and colour of the document she realised the game was up and made herself scarce.
In the end Meyrink was cleared of all charges. Max Brod’s father was one of those who examined the books of Meyrink’s bank:
Enemies… had accused him of dishonesty in his business affairs and reported him to the state prosecutor’s office. Quite unjustly, as my father told me. And he ought to have known, for he was an accountant, at that time already deputy manager of a large bank; and he was one of those who had been charged with examining the books of the firm of Meyer. All the reports agreed: no impropriety had been found.20
There is a document in the Meyrinkiana confirming this:
It is hereby officially confirmed that the preliminary investigation against Herr Gustav Meyer, former banker in Prague, on suspicion of fraud, which was opened on 18 January 1902, was abandoned on 2 April 1902 following a declaration from the state prosecutor’s office that they found no reason to continue the investigation.
Meyrink was completely exonerated but ruined. During the investigation, his bank had been closed. It never reopened; after the scandal and sensational reports in the newspapers people were not surprisingly no longer willing to entrust their money to him. In typical fashion he refused to accept that and made desperate attempts to re-establish his good name by asking the newspapers, who had been so quick to condemn him, to print a statement that his books had been found to be in order. Only a few printed a brief version; the response of some was scornful. One is said to have written:
Outrageous. Gustav Meyer, the notorious owner of a bureau de change who, after a series of problems with the courts in January of this year, was arrested on account of various widely publicised financial dealings and released because at present the law has no precise provisions for such ‘dealings’ has, after having been fortunate enough to escape retribution by the skin of his teeth, had the impu — imprudence to threaten to take the editors of the newspapers, which reported on his doings on the basis of statements from the authorities, to court — for libel. One would imagine that this type of person, only just having avoided the sword of Damocles, would be happy to sink back discreetly into social obscurity.21
The investigation had ruined his business and the period in prison had aggravated his ill-health. According to Kisch it took one more misfortune to drive him out of Prague. The court hearing Meyrink’s appeal in the libel case brought against him by the two officers upheld the decision of the original court and even insisted he should serve the prison sentence, rather than pay a fine. Meyrink gave up, though he did not move immediately, as Kisch implies. It was the next year, 1904, that he left Prague for Vienna.
The experience of prison made a deep mark on Meyrink. Soon after his release, or perhaps even while he was in prison, he wrote two short stories which express the wretchedness and despair of incarceration. The September 1902 number of Simplicissimus, after his release in April, carried a piece by him called ‘Das ganze Sein ist flammend Leid’ (The Whole of Existence is a Blaze of Suffering) the title is taken from a poetic translation of one of the sayings of the Buddha: ‘Sorrowful are all composite things. He who perceives the truth of this gets disgusted with this world of suffering. This is the path to purity.’ Old Jürgen’s feelings in his cell presumably reflect Meyrink’s closely:
The warder went from door to door with his heavy bundle of keys, shone his torch one last time through the barred openings, as is his duty, and checked that the iron bars had been put across the doors. Finally the sound of his steps died away and the silence of misery descended on all the unfortunates who, robbed of their freedom, slept on their wooden benches in the dreary cells.
…
During the first weeks the feeling of outrage, of furious hatred at being locked up for so long when he was completely innocent had pursued him even in his dreams and often he had felt like screaming out loud in desperation.
The prisoner is released and makes a meagre living selling caged songbirds until one day a woman brings two nightingales back and asks him to put out their eyes so they will sing more often. The man releases all his caged birds and hangs himself.
Before that, less than three months after his release, ‘Terror’ appeared in Simplicissimus. In it a prisoner in the condemned cell sees the terror he feels at his approaching execution as
a hideous worm … a gigantic leech. Dark yellow in colour, with black flecks, it sucks its way along the floor, past each cell in turn. Alternately growing fat and then elongating, it gropes its way along, searching.’
(Opal, 42)
In his first novel, The Golem, the hero, Pernath, is also unjustly imprisoned due to the machinations of a police officer called Otschin, which has deliberate echoes of Olic.
Notes
19 Guillaume Apollinaire: ‘Le passant de Prague’ in: L’Hérésiarque et Cie, Paris, 1967, p. 11.
20 Brod, p. 294
21 Politik, 22.4.1902; quoted in Prager Tagblatt, 21.1.1927.