What is a torero? – The intriguing life of Michael von der Goltz
Erdosain
One of von der Goltz’s publicity posters
The question ‘What is a torero?’ may seem derisory in an online medium devoted to bullfighting, aptly called toros:toreros. I have no doubt that the editor and readers of this esteemed publication know perfectly well what a toro and a torero are. Yet this insignificant question has been at the heart of a long exchange - a controversy in the theological sense - between a prominent bullfighting writer and myself, the author of a modest biography in French recently published under the title Sans Répit (Restless) by Éditions L’Harmattan.
Having just finished a previous book on bullfighting and looking for a topic, I remembered an article published in Geo n°1 (German edition) in January 1981, devoted to a young German baron who was bullfighting in Spain. I still wonder how it is that I discovered this article at the time - me who never understood my German lessons - and how I remembered it 40 years later.
This chance is not the only strange thing that occurred in writing this book. Desperate to find more information about Michael von der Goltz, other than his genealogy and rare cartels in the archives of the Spanish press, I fell one day on the message of a Californian lady posted on Facebook. But, at the time, I did not have Facebook! The message appeared on my browser, lost among various articles. She said, “I dated Michael von der Goltz in 1982 in Bolivia. I would like to correspond with people who knew him.”
I hastened to set up a Facebook account and write to this Californian. Her response was immediate. This was followed by two or three years of almost daily exchanges. Julia - that was her first name - had been the girlfriend of Michael von der Goltz in Bolivia at the most dangerous time, when coups were taking place and drug trafficking became the main economic activity. It is thanks to her that it has become possible to tell the story of this young German discovered in a traje de luces facing a bull in a poor village of Spain.
Sans Répit tells the brief life of this young German baron (Freiherr), Michael von der Goltz, raised in Uruguay, who obtained a doctorate in philosophy at Oxford and immediately went to Pamplona to check whether what Hemingway had written was true. Struck by a passion for bullfighting, he decided to devote a decade of his life to it, before turning to journalism. In spite of about 40 bullfights, Michael von der Goltz remained a novillero under the nickname of Miguel de Alemania or Miguel Rodrigo. In the meantime, he met the famous German journalist Kai Hermann, who offered him work. Von der Goltz belonged to a dynasty of generals and admirals; he spoke fluent Spanish in addition to German; he was politically on the side of the oppressed; and he was not afraid to risk his life in the arenas. He therefore had the qualities required for the mission that Kai Hermann wanted to entrust him with: infiltrating the Nazi networks in Bolivia, at the worst time of the Cold War.
It was incomprehensible that Julia, a 17-year-old girl, found herself in La Paz in 1982, alone, thousands of miles away from her parents. That she fell in love with a 36-year-old man, a spy, added a layer of romance. That she had touched the neo-Nazi circles was pure happenstance.
At the heart of these networks, comprising German, French, Belgian and Austrian mercenaries and Italian terrorists (those responsible for the attacks of the ‘Years of Lead’ in Italy), reigned Klaus Barbie, a former SS officer who’d served as a blood stained Gestapo officer in the Netherlands and then headed the Gestapo in Lyon, France. Here, among other crimes, he had 44 Jewish child refugees at Izieu deported to the death camps. Barbie was officially wanted by all Western police forces.
He lived in Bolivia under the name of Klaus Altmann, participated in the Nazi solidarity network in Latin America (Kameradenwerke), trafficked weapons and advised the secret police of the Bolivian dictators. He helped capture Che Guevara and many other Leftist militants. Michael von der Goltz faithfully reported all of this to Kai Hermann.
Posing as a young sympathetic journalist, von der Goltz interviewed Barbie several times, and many other exiled Nazis like Wim Sassen. All this research almost cost him his life, but enabled the publication by Kai Hermann of a series of long articles under the title ‘Eine Killer-Karriere’, in the magazine Stern in 1984, while Barbie was detained in Lyon awaiting trial. It became clear that all the governments from France, USA and West Germany were aware of the true identity of this Klaus Altmann and his presence in Bolivia, and they even worked with him.
Michael on his way to a novillada
For three or four years, Michael von der Goltz did as the Spanish figuras: toreando in Spain in the summer and in Latin America in winter. Except that the arena where he performed in Bolivia or Argentina was not a large disc of blond sand bordered by red barriers.
In Spain, he used to meet Victorino Martín hijo, with whom he had started bullfighting. He spent evenings watching samurai movies and getting drunk on sake with Antonio Corbacho, the future apoderado of José Tomás and Talavante. Unable to afford a cuadrilla and lacking training, von der Goltz stopped bullfighting and devoted himself to journalism, but remained based in Sevilla and did not break ties with the taurine milieu.
My book covers many other episodes of the life of Michael von der Goltz in the USA, Mexico and Morocco that make it read like a pure adventure novel. Two details: the great dancer and choreographer Blanca Li, of Spanish origin and currently director of the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, admitted a few years ago to the French Academy that her career was launched by Michael von der Goltz, who met her in a street in Sevilla and later introduced her to the Martha Graham School in New York. The second : Jim Jarmusch played his first role in American Autobahn, a film produced by Michael von der Goltz, who also acted in it.
We must return to my friend the bullfighting writer and our controversy. Was Michael von der Goltz a bullfighter? He says not. I respect his opinion because he has the highest regard for bullfighting, and I'll always be an amateur compared to him. For many young Europeans in the 1970s and 1980s, the Spain of declining Francoism, and then the return to democracy, was fascinating with its exoticism. Being passionate about bullfighting, dreaming of being a bullfighter and - why not? - trying to become one, was an exciting mirage. They obviously had neither the patience, nor the culture, nor the requirements necessary to become true toreros and their attempts were not successful. That’s my friend’s general judgement on these people.
But let’s see the definition of ‘torero’. In La Tauromachie, Histoire et dictionnaire, put together by Robert Bérard and published by Robert Laffont, it is said that ‘torero’ refers to “any professional man who practises bullfighting in whatever function he assumes”. A banderillero is a torero, just like a novillero or a matador. That there are good, bad, lazy, brave, cheating, rigorous toreros is obvious.
Michael von der Goltz performed some 40 times in plazas de toros, according to Corbacho’s own confidences. He fought with sincerity - that is the main thing. But, if I think I have written a book on bullfighting, even if it holds a modest place, it’s because my hero has always behaved as a torero, because he risked his life in arenas but also in other places, without bleachers or a toril, but just as dangerous as those where bullfighting is practised. He paid with his life, because I believe, like Julia, that he was murdered. And if the book lacks details, such as on his sexuality, it makes it even truer, as long as there are characters in fiction about which we can know everything. The others, that is to say us human beings, always keep our share of shade. Fortunately.
[‘Sans Répit’ can be purchased via the following link at the price of 19 euros plus postage: https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/catalogue/livre/sans-repit/77348. Erdosain’s previous book on bullfighting, ‘Très vérifique relation....’ can be purchased at 14 euros plus postage via : https://editions-verdier.fr/livre/tres-veridique-relation-des-evenements-qui-entourerent-la-mort-des-celebres-toreros-fortunato-vasquez-et-fortunato-marquez-selon-diverses-sources-profanes-et-religieuses/]