Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [175]
A series of reports for his superiors had been stolen from von Dincklage and used as one of the central pieces of evidence for the book’s claims. Printing a selection of von Dincklage’s weekly reports back to Berlin, the book exposed his activities and showed “the many channels used by Goebbels and the Gestapo in common for the execution of their work abroad.” A letter from von Dincklage to the Paris correspondent of a major German newspaper alerts one to his nickname: “Kofink visited me today, I will probably be able to use him. He will phone you soon and have news for Mr. Spatz. I am Mr. Spatz. When this is the case, would you please inform me immediately by telephone .”17 Spatz, meaning a sparrow garrulously hopping from one place to another, was the name von Dincklage jokingly gave himself with French friends.
The Brown Network goes on to say that “every legation has its Dincklage. Gangster, profiteer, Gestapo agent—this admixture characterizes Hitler’s diplomats . . . His reports show the many lines along which foreign propagandist activity is conducted, and how these lines converge at one common point: espionage.”18 In page after page, von Dincklage details observations, connections and suggestions for his Nazi masters. He talks of his “large French circle” and says that “day by day this circle grows” and, through it, he hopes to be able to carry out his “social mission most satisfactorily.”19
Although this extraordinary book was first published in German, French-and English-language editions were published in 1936 and gradually those in Paris got word of it. This exposé of von Dincklage’s activities must have unsettled him a great deal. While he was a master at deception and duplicity, and would have been most convincing in his persuasion that The Brown Network was a scurrilous fabrication, the episode cannot but have been a serious bar to his promotion to the highest ranks of Nazi espionage.
Understandably, after the book’s publication, von Dincklage absented himself from Paris for some months. During this period, he persuaded Catsy that he must divorce her. Their divorce papers don’t give the real reason—in other words, Maximiliana von Schoenebeck’s Jewishness—instead, the cause is stated as their failure to have children.20 Von Dincklage returned to France, and although Catsy felt bitter and still cared for him, she agreed to keep their divorce a secret.21 In Paris, while her ex-husband continued at the fine addresses where he always managed to live, he also maintained his extensive reputation as a Don Juan. Marriage had in no way held up the progress of von Dincklage’s conquests; it had simply given them an extra frisson. And he now asked Alex Liberman if he would introduce him to Comtesse Hélène Dessoffy.
Hélène Dessoffy and her husband, Jacques, “had enough money never to need to work, and channelled most of their energies into buying and redecorating their houses. Hélène was the daughter of a high-ranking naval officer, a horsy, long-legged, chain-smoking woman with . . . a wry, swift wit.”22 Wasting no time, von Dincklage was soon launched into “a torrid affair” with her. Unknown to Hélène Dessoffy, when her lover traveled south to spend time with her at Sanary (she and her husband lived “rather separate lives and usually inhabited separate villas”23), he would also visit his ex-wife nearby. At the same time, von Dincklage continued his long-term surveillance of the Jews of Sanary and the French naval port of Toulon across the hill. Now that he was divorced, his affair with Hélène Dessoffy gave him another alibi for being in the south.24
While the above narrative gives some insight into von Dincklage’s character and his multifarious activities, he continued to charm and amuse his way into the lives of an expanding Parisian circle, and we find the odd tantalizing glimpses of him in the late