Chairman-General of the German Federalist Alliance
Table of Contents
1. Summary
2. Key Details
3. Family and Childhood
4. Military and Political Career
5. The Rough Gotlib
6. The Interview Sessions
7. Personal Information
1. Summary
Johann Reyher is a calculating, highly educated, scientifically-minded Prussian general’s son and widely respected two-time war hero. Although from an aristocratic background, Reyher was the brightest among the imperial generals captured during the Revolution and was released by his revolutionary captors to command the revolutionary army shortly after the Russian invasion of 1913. His heroism made him popular among Germans in the east and he subsequently became undisputed leader of the German Federalist Alliance through his monopoly on the military.
Groomed to become an imperial officer, Reyher is well educated and rather proud of his extensive knowledge. Privileged as a child, he projects a dignified and disciplined persona consistent with the high-society norms for military elite under the old empire. He has a dry sense of humour, is quite articulate and is defensive about his intellect. His leadership style is relaxed and unenergetic; Reyher sees his role as maintaining strong links in the chain of command and delegates much of daily work to assistants and a small elite of trusted officials. His interpersonal life is highly secretive, although accounts indicate Reyher is cold, emotionally distant and psychologically distressed. He has only felt strong sentimental attachment to his family and a couple close friends. These contacts have all been deceased for many years.
Reyher maintains his rule through the political alliance of progressives and socialists under the Fortschrittist Party. His personal political vision is exemplified in the Party’s futurist propaganda, which stresses progress, science and human development above more typical socialist themes of labour, revolution, and fraternal solidarity. Reyher himself is committed to socialism merely as a useful instrument of his personal, post-nationalist, science-oriented vision of human achievement – he views tsarism, fascism and capitalism as foolish systems of belief, and socialism as
more practical.
2. Key Details
Full Birth Name: Johann Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Reyher (1)
Date and Place of Birth: 11th of May 1881, Groß Schönebeck (50 km north of Berlin)
Spouse(s): Never married, one known mistress (2)
Religion: Agnostic, opposed to both organized religion and militant atheism
1: Reyher dropped “von” from his name shortly after the Revolution.
2: See section 5.
3. Family and Childhood
Since childhood Reyher has shielded himself from trauma by allowing only an exceedingly small number of people close to him. These individuals include his immediate family and a small number of friends prior to the Revolution – all have perished to Reyher’s enormous grief each time. This distant and cautious attitude toward most people makes anything less than absolute professionalism unimpressive to Reyher, both in subordinates and in negotiations between heads of state.
Johann Reyher’s father, Baron Karl von Reyher, was a prominent Prussian general and aristocrat. He died of pneumonia in 1889 when Johann was 8 years old. Johann’s mother, Louisa von Reyher, lived much longer and played a much more important part in Johann’s life – she died of sheer age in 1914. Reyher had an extremely close relationship with his mother. (3)
The only other noteworthy family member close to Reyher was his twin sister, Wilhelmina. They were known as the “blue twins” by family and friends because of the matching blue jackets they wore as children – they maintained a strong connection until Wilhelmina’s death due to premature birth in 1905. (4)
In 1894 Reyher became a cadet at his military academy where most of his friendships were made; he became an adjutant to the military in 1898. Standing out among Reyher’s friends during the pre-revolutionary period at the academy is one Georg von Plein, a fellow cadet, who, along with Reyher, was the centre of a rumoured homosexual lover’s tryst. (5) The possible culmination of this affair was the event that ended von Plein’s life, one of the last duels fought in Germany, which von Plein lost in 1907, dying of his injuries.
3: Reyher was, according to the covertly obtained testimony of his manservant, “completely devastated” by the death of his mother, though this fact was expertly hidden from public view.
4: Allegations exist that the “blue twins” had a secret sexual relationship. These mostly cropped up during the power struggles of the late 1910s. Probability: extremely low.
5: Probability: moderate to high. See section 6.
4. Military and Political Career
Reyher's first real taste of combat came during the Second Franco-Prussian War - the last war fought by the German Empire before being consumed by the Revolution. In the war Reyher distinguished himself as a field commander, returning to Berlin in 1912 to be arrested by the east German revolutionaries. Not longer than a year later the Russian invasion compelled the east German socialist factions to release imperial commanders to serve against the Russians - Reyher's brilliant command halted the invasion and won him the admiration of many socialists in east Germany.
By the time of the Russian armistice, Reyher was the top general of a motley alliance of east German revolutionary factions (both socialist and nationalist). Having both loyal armies and broad admiration, Reyher leveraged these assets to keep himself safe from various political intrigues by hard-line socialists as well as reactionary elements.
Reyher fended off two main rivals in the years prior to the final conference of 1927 that formally proclaimed three systems of government within the German Union. The first of these was a brief smear campaign in the late 1920s by the civil leader of the Brandenburg Council Republic, Arthur Bauhmann. This was not a serious threat and Bauhmann was ostracized by 1919, leading to the “Prussian Interim” (1919-1922) during which period the territory of the modern German Federalist Alliance was neither under full control of the local councils nor responsive to Essen or Munich.
During these years Reyher and his old Western Front acquaintance Frederick Lassow became the leaders of the Wiedervereinigung (“reconciliation,” “reunion”
movement which aimed to bring order to Brandenburg and Saxony by allowing wide-spread cooperation and collaboration of reactionary and progressive forces for the sake of national security and reconstruction. Being a much better orator and an avid nationalist with anti-Semitic views, Lassow enjoyed temporary spike in popularity between 1921 and 1926, when his public speeches in front of paramilitary bands of patriotic youth and disillusioned veterans outlined the idea of a strong nationalist-socialist state. Pushed into the shadow of Lassow’s rise to prominence, Reyher focused his efforts on rebuilding the state’s bureaucracy, police, and officer corps.
That groundwork helped Reyher prevail when Lassow caused a scandal during a major rally in 1926. Lassow went astray from the principles of socialism in his speech, calling for a full reversal from “weak-willed cosmopolitanism” in German politics. Having struck a backroom deal with the enraged Wolfgang Jäger and a then-influential clique of Bavarian publicists, Reyher started a series of criminal cases against Lassow, followed up with a crackdown on his paramilitary groups. Once Lassow was out of the way, Reyher quickly solidified his power, stopping attempts by Essen and Munich to turn the Prussian political crisis into an opportunity for a power grab. (6)
6. Shortly thereafter in 1927 Bavaria, the Ruhr and a finally stable German Federalist Alliance entered into formal agreement about the permanent borders between sub-states within the German Union.
5. The Rough Gotlib
Since spring 1930 Reyher has been making biweekly secret visits to the “Rough Gotlib” restaurant in the South Berlin. Accounts obtained by our agents regarding these visits give a rare window into Reyher's personal life. The restaurant is of no particular importance; it features subdued dance music, a dance floor, traditional German and Bohemian cuisine, a small bar, and is popular among a local petit-bourgeois audience. Based on the observations of Reyher’s bodyguards from our agents, Chairman-General often plays chess with a local frequenter, Protestant pastor Schlag, and often has long, warm conversations with the owner of the restaurant, Frau Zaurich (a politically ignorant 77 year old lady).
Another frequenter of the restaurant that Johann is known to meet more than once is one Frau Gabi Nabel (a single 33-year-old local typist of unknown political sympathies). General-Chairman has had at least 11 outings with her since 1935 (all discretely), although it is hard to determine if the two ever were sexually intimate.
6. The Interview Sessions
In the “interview sessions” that Chairman-General Reyher had in 1934 with one Sigmund Freud, a prominent psychoanalyst of Bohemian origin, Reyher was known to admit his lack of sexual drive and lack of any desire to reach closeness with others in general. While the full transcript of the “interview” is owned personally by Reyher and its copies are destroyed, Dr. Freud has mentioned in one of his letters (checked by our agents) that the Chairman-General, according to his theory, did have a strong sexual attraction to his sister in his childhood, but was forced to suppress these feelings out of fear of social stigma associated with incest. (7) That pushed him to homosexual relationship in his late teenage years, something that didn’t quite give him any emotional fulfillment and is now being considered by him as a mistake and “time and energy wasted decadently.”
Death of his mother finished the circle of personal losses suffered by Johann Reyher and left him ultimately estranged and intellectually marginalized. The “interviews,” according to Dr. Freud’s letters, were starting to bring first results, but eventually ended with a “display of visible anger, so rare for the patient” and ultimately led to the end of the last “interview.” “Perhaps,” Dr. Freud finishes his letter, “the patient could find a way to reconcile with his suppressed subconscious and find catharsis in new surrogate relationships.” As per Reyher’s personal order all Dr. Freud’s letters containing such “sensitive” information are being secretly confiscated and destroyed by the postal services, while Dr. Freud is being allowed to continue his study and lecture unhindered, and General-Chairman has since anonymously donated to Dr. Freud’s school of modern psychoanalysis at least twice.
7. Our own psychologists have strong disagreements with Dr. Freud and his opinion is recorded here for informational purposes, not to lend weight to his interpretation.
7. Personal Information
Reyher usually reads at least three main German, one British, one Russian, and two American newspapers before lunch every day. Despite being praised as the political leader of the Fortschrittist movement, Reyher admittedly “hates” most of contemporary science fiction, describing it as “petty drama in the world of modern sorcery.” He does, however, like to read what some describe as “hard science fiction” and “scientific futurism.”
Reyher has kept some old regime privileges for himself, such as having a manservant and living in a private house in Berlin. He, however, doesn’t surround himself with luxury and supports a lifestyle minimally qualifying for expectations of low nobility.
His hobbies include horseback riding, fencing (saber and Prussian pike), chess and collecting nutcrackers. His favorite alcohol is quality cognac (he was seen drunk only three times in his life: once during the early days of his military career and twice after the death of his mother).
He owns three cats: Abbo, Flocki, and Britta.
