Lufthansa

Lufthansa is both an instrument of international travel in the novel and a crucial, though initially uncertain, link in Xavier March’s investigation of Martin Luther’s disappearance. Its Berlin–Zürich flights may establish how Luther moved between the two cities, while a Lufthansa Junkers carries March himself toward Zürich with evidence connected to Wilhelm Stuckart. The airline’s ordinary business routes thus become part of a search shaped by secrecy, surveillance, and the danger of being followed.

Routes and the Luther Inquiry

March’s reconstruction of Luther’s movements hinges on the question of whether he returned to Berlin from Zürich on Monday afternoon or remained abroad. He reasons that Luther may have posted the chocolate parcels shortly before boarding a flight, perhaps at about five o’clock, then landed in Berlin around seven and disappeared. The timing is an inference rather than confirmed passenger information, but it gives the airline’s Berlin–Zürich service a central place in March’s working theory: a scheduled commercial journey may explain both the parcels’ origin and the gap in Luther’s whereabouts.

To test the possibility, March uses a personal contact at Lufthansa headquarters. Alone in his office, he calls Friedman, the airline’s head of security and a former Criminal Police investigator he knows, and asks him to check whether anyone named Martin Luther travelled on a Berlin–Zürich flight on Sunday or Monday. Friedman responds with amused disbelief, comparing the request to searches for Emperor Charlemagne or Goethe. March insists that the matter is important. The exchange shows that the inquiry depends not only on the airline’s records and routes but on March’s ability to persuade an institutional contact to take an extraordinary request seriously; the evidence here records the request, not the result of the check.

The Airline as a Network of Movement

The novel places Lufthansa within a transformed aviation landscape at Flughafen Hermann Göring. On the runways, its new passenger jets bear red, white, and black swastikas, set beside blue-and-white Pan American aircraft. The contrast makes the airline’s national identity visible even as its work connects Berlin to international destinations. The airport’s marble-and-glass terminal, designed by Albert Speer, channels passengers through a modern environment whose surfaces and procedures suggest order and technical control.

That controlled passage has a coercive edge. Before boarding, March sees luggage sent through X-ray screening, passengers frisked, and each item in his suitcase inspected, from an opened sponge bag to shaving foam uncapped and sniffed. The guards’ care is explained by the severe consequences they could face if an aircraft were lost to hijacking or a bomb. Lufthansa’s air travel therefore operates within a state security system that scrutinizes both people and possessions; the airline’s routine procedures coexist with the political threat surrounding March’s journey.

March’s Flight to Zürich

March boards the day’s last Lufthansa flight from Berlin to Zürich ten minutes before takeoff. The cabin is full of businessmen and bankers in dark three-piece suits, but the seat beside him is empty. He stows his suitcase overhead and settles into the flight as a Bach cantata plays inside the aircraft and the engines rise from a hum to a brittle whine. After being awake for thirty-three of the previous thirty-six hours, he falls asleep. The scene marks a brief bodily release after sustained exhaustion, but it also carries him out of Berlin while the investigation remains unresolved.

Before boarding, March confirms that Stuckart’s letter is still in his inside pocket and turns a small brass key in his other hand. These objects accompany him through the airport’s scrutiny and onto the Zürich flight, making the airline’s route the means by which evidence and the investigator leave the capital together. Lufthansa is not shown deciding the investigation’s outcome; its significance lies in enabling the movement on which March’s next stage depends.

A Limited but Pivotal Presence

The evidence associates Lufthansa with several distinct moments: March’s hypothesis that Luther returned from Zürich, his request for a passenger check, the airline’s swastika-marked jets, and March’s departure on the last flight to Zürich. Together they present the airline as both a conspicuous emblem of the regime and a practical transport network whose records might clarify a disappearance. Yet the check’s outcome is not supplied, and Luther’s precise route remains uncertain in these scenes. That incompleteness is part of Lufthansa’s narrative function: it offers a concrete avenue of investigation without, on the evidence available here, resolving the mystery.