Paul von Hartmann and Leyna’s relationship

Paul von Hartmann and Leyna’s relationship is a bond of political affinity, personal closeness, conflict, and lasting responsibility. Its early shape appears during a reckless outing to see Adolf Hitler: Hartmann knows Leyna well enough to fear what she might do, yet their shared history does not prevent her from acting independently or the friendship from fracturing. Years later, after they have separated, Hartmann helps secure care for her. That continued effort gives their relationship a quiet afterlife, even as the novel leaves much of their private history unresolved.

An Unequal Alliance in Munich

Leyna wants to see Adolf Hitler in person, not hear him speak. As a communist, she rejects the idea of attending his rally, but is fascinated by the man who has risen from political obscurity to the brink of becoming Chancellor. Her plan is to wait outside his apartment in the hope of catching sight of him. Hartmann opposes the excursion, dismissing it as a trivial diversion from the social forces that produced Hitler. His objection is also personal: Hugh Legat later understands that Hartmann knows Leyna’s capacity for recklessness and fears the danger she may invite.

Leyna asks Legat to decide between them, and he supports her. His choice is driven partly by curiosity about Hitler and partly by his own infatuation with Leyna; Hartmann is more worldly, while Legat is only twenty-one and inexperienced. All three know of Legat’s feelings and treat them as a joke. This triangle establishes a distinction between the two men’s positions: Hartmann’s concern comes from knowing Leyna, while Legat is drawn to her and willing to follow her lead. Their walk across Munich, after a picnic on Königsplatz, proceeds despite Hartmann’s suggestion that they turn aside to swim in the Eisbach. Leyna will not be diverted.

At the apartment, Leyna openly raises the death of Adolf Hitler’s niece, Geli Raubal, and the scandal surrounding their relationship. Hartmann does not answer her speculation. The exchange shows that Leyna is prepared to voice accusations in public, while Hartmann responds with silence rather than matching her provocation. When Adolf Hitler appears and Leyna denounces him, men from the honour guard move towards her. Hartmann grabs her arm and pulls her away. The gesture is immediate and practical: whatever their disagreement about the outing, he acts to get her out of danger.

The Flight and the Break

The group runs from the square, pursued by Brownshirts. Hugh Legat is struck by a bystander and becomes separated from Hartmann and Leyna when he takes a side road. He reaches a gate alone, recovering from the chase, while the others continue ahead. At the hostel, Leyna is waiting in the courtyard. She hurries to Legat, checks on him, and takes him upstairs to care for him. Their closeness culminates in a kiss and an intimate encounter. This is the turning point in the remembered episode: Legat’s attraction to Leyna becomes an act that bears directly on Hartmann’s relationship with her.

Hartmann does not return that night. In the morning, Legat leaves his share of the bill and takes the earliest train out of Munich. The sequence makes the rupture plain without settling exactly what Hartmann knows. Much later, during the drive with Hartmann, Legat wonders whether Hartmann understood that he had betrayed him; he has assumed so, reasoning that otherwise Hartmann might have contacted him in the years since. That remains Legat’s interpretation, not confirmed knowledge. He also recalls writing Leyna two letters expressing love and remorse, mixed with moral lectures, both of which were returned unopened. The failed letters leave no evidence of reconciliation, only the distance created by the episode.

Separation and Leyna’s Persecution

Hartmann eventually tells Legat that he and Leyna parted after Munich and that he lost touch with her. He describes her as too much for him, then recounts what he has learned of her later life. Leyna returned to Berlin and became more deeply involved with the communists, working for the underground continuation of Die Rote Fahn after the authorities banned the newspaper. Hartmann’s account marks a change in the terms of their connection: he is no longer beside her as a companion, and his knowledge of her circumstances is indirect, but he remains attentive to what happened.

In 1935, Leyna was caught in a raid and sent to Moringen, a women’s camp. By then she was married to a fellow communist, who was later killed fighting in Spain. After her release, she returned to communist activity and was arrested again. Hartmann says the authorities then discovered that she was Jewish and treated her more harshly. The story he gives Legat is uncertain in important respects: he says that officials claimed Leyna had fallen from a third-floor window and that he believes this account, but he also reports that a Star of David had been carved into her back beforehand. The facts he can relate are therefore both a record of persecution and a measure of how little he was able to know or control from outside.

Care, Responsibility, and Recognition

Hartmann’s renewed involvement begins when Leyna’s mother contacts him. A widow and former teacher with little money, she has heard that Hartmann has joined the Party and asks whether he can use his influence to obtain proper treatment for her daughter. Hartmann tries, but says Leyna’s brain has been too badly damaged for that effort to succeed. What he can do is pay for her nursing home. He also explains that his position has enabled the institution to overlook the fact that she is Jewish. His assistance is limited, and the circumstances that make it necessary expose the danger still surrounding her; nevertheless, it is a concrete continuation of care after years of separation.

Legat responds with sympathy, but Hartmann rejects the idea that his actions deserve to be called decent. The conversation shifts from personal history to political understanding. Hartmann tells Legat that, in his earlier view, antisemitism could be treated as a separable evil, distinct from Hitler’s other achievements. Leyna’s treatment has made that separation untenable to him: persecution cannot be dismissed as an isolated feature of the regime when it demonstrates what the regime is capable of doing. Legat says that he now understands. Their exchange does not undo the old rupture or establish a reunion with Leyna, but it shows Hartmann converting a private history of attachment and loss into a clearer judgment of political responsibility.

An Unresolved Bond

The relationship is presented largely through Legat’s recollection and Hartmann’s later account, so its inward life remains partly out of reach. The narrative gives no confirmation that Hartmann knew the details of Legat’s betrayal, and Hartmann’s report of Leyna’s later path is explicitly incomplete. What it does establish is a pattern of proximity followed by separation: Hartmann recognizes the danger in Leyna’s boldness, pulls her away when it becomes immediate, quarrels with her after the escape, and later acts when her mother asks for help.

That pattern resists a simple resolution. Hartmann’s care does not erase the fact that they parted, and the account offers no evidence that Leyna received his help as reconciliation. Instead, the bond persists through responsibility exercised at a distance: arranging and paying for her care, and confronting what her persecution means. In this way, Leyna’s fate changes Hartmann’s understanding of the political world, while the relationship’s ending remains unresolved rather than restored.