The Hero Schliemann Read online

  Almost two hundred years ago, in Germany, a boy scratched his initials on a linden tree.

  He was small for his age, with brown eyes and a head that looked too big for the rest of him. He was fifth in a family of nine children, and the oldest living son. Two and a half months after he was born, his older brother died and he was given the dead boy’s name: Heinrich. The first initial, H, was two slashes and a crosspiece. He gripped the penknife tightly, trying to make the lines straight.

  The next initial, S, was tricky. He knew that from experience: he had carved his initials dozens of times before, and the curves of the S were hard to control. Nevertheless, he wanted to make his mark. He started on the S of his last name.

  His last name was Schliemann, and in the center of that German name is the English word lie. Perhaps now is as good a time as any to consider the subject of lying, because the boy Heinrich did not grow up to be a truthful man.

  Few people are entirely honest. Many people lie once in a while. Heinrich Schliemann lied more often than that.

  Heinrich Schliemann thought of his life as a story. He was the hero. He believed he was born under a lucky star, that he was meant to astonish the world with his adventures. From the time he was a boy — or so he said — he knew it was his destiny to dig up lost cities and find buried treasure.

  And this is not impossible. It is children, after all, who dare to dream wild dreams. It is children who make up their minds that they will someday be rich and famous and that their lives will not be commonplace.

  But most scholars believe that when sixty-year-old Heinrich Schliemann wrote his autobiography, he rewrote his life, giving himself the kind of childhood a hero ought to have had. Because Schliemann was an imaginative and convincing liar, it’s hard to know what really happened and what he made up.

  He was a man who loved stories. He loved them so much that he wanted them to be true.

  Heinrich Schliemann was born in 1822. His father was a clergyman, the pastor of a little village named Ankershagen. It was his childhood home, Schliemann wrote, that awakened his love for “the mysterious and the marvelous.” The little village of Ankershagen was riddled with stories. Close to the Schliemann parsonage, a wicked robber had buried his dead child in a golden cradle. “Behind our garden,” Schliemann wrote, “was a pond . . . out of which a maiden was believed to rise each midnight, holding a silver bowl. . . . My faith in . . . these treasures was so great that, whenever I heard my father complain of his poverty, I always expressed my astonishment that he did not dig up the silver bowl or the golden cradle and so become rich.”

  Schliemann’s story about these folk tales may be true — or it may not. The legends about the golden cradle and the silver bowl are authentic Ankershagen stories; Schliemann did not make them up, and he may have known of them when he was a boy. All his life he was fascinated by what lay buried: by bones and graveyards and treasure. It is also possible that Heinrich only read the stories later in his life. There were books of Ankershagen folk tales in his library when he was a man.

  According to Schliemann, his love for the poet Homer also began in childhood. At the age of seven, he received a Christmas present from his father, a children’s book based on Homer’s epic poem The Iliad. Inside the book was a picture of the ancient city of Ilium, or Troy. Heinrich was much struck by the towering walls of the city. “Father,” he insisted, “if such walls once existed, they cannot possibly have been completely destroyed.”

  Heinrich’s father tried to explain to his son that the city of Troy had been burned to the ground and that no one alive knew where the city had been. But Heinrich would not listen. It was then that he decided that he would someday search the world for the lost city of Troy and dig it out of the ground.

  Is the story of the Christmas gift — and what it inspired — true? Who can say? The Iliad is a story of courage, violence, and splendor — the kind of story that can set the imagination on fire. And a copy of the children’s book was found in Heinrich’s library when he was grown up, and Heinrich’s name was written inside — but in the handwriting of an adult. Only one thing is certain: if seven-year-old Schliemann dreamed of finding lost Troy, his dreams were abruptly set aside. When Heinrich was nine years old, his whole world changed.

  Ernst Schliemann, Heinrich’s father, was a poor excuse for a man of God. He was quarrelsome and violent. He drank too much and spent large sums of money on presents for a woman who was not his wife. The people of Ankershagen suspected him of mishandling money that belonged to the church. They disapproved of him and felt sorry for his wife.

  When Heinrich was nine years old, his mother died and the people of Ankershagen began to show Pastor Schliemann how they felt about him. They took to marching around the Schliemann house every Sunday, banging on pots and pans and throwing stones. The village children were no longer allowed to play with the young Schliemanns.

  Heinrich felt a special grief in losing touch with a little girl who was his friend, Minna Meincke. Heinrich and Minna had vowed that one day they would marry and devote their lives to searching for treasure. In his autobiography, Heinrich wrote that no trouble in his adult life caused him as much pain as “my separation from my little bride.”

  Little bride? When Heinrich Schliemann was writing his autobiography, tales of childhood romance were considered very touching. The tale of Minna may have been one of Heinrich’s prettiest stories. He did, however, ask Minna to marry him fifteen years later.

  Heinrich’s ninth year was a hard one. His mother was dead, his father was disgraced, and he was sent away to live with an uncle, who arranged for his education.

  In the years that followed, Heinrich’s father lost his job, and the family grew poorer. It was decided that Heinrich, as the eldest son, should leave school and earn his own living. At this time, he was fourteen years old, a slight and weedy-looking boy with a hollow chest. None of Heinrich’s school reports give any hint that the schoolboy was a genius. His grades were only so-so.

  He spent the next five years working for a grocer named Ernst Holtz. The work was both strenuous and dull. From five in the morning to eleven at night, Heinrich unpacked heavy barrels of goods. His muscles ached, and his mind was numb with boredom. Worst of all, he felt trapped: the future held nothing but more of the same.

  It was ill health that saved him. One day he lifted a heavy cask of chicory and began to cough up blood. Coughing up blood is a symptom of tuberculosis, a deadly disease that was widespread in the 1800s. Heinrich feared that unless he found less taxing work, the disease would kill him.

  And so Heinrich left the grocer’s shop behind. A change of climate was often prescribed as a cure for tuberculosis, and Heinrich had an itch to travel, to escape to another land. He hastened to his father’s house and begged for money to take a journey. Ernst Schliemann refused.

  Heinrich made up his mind to leave Ankershagen and strike out for himself. He was not to see his childhood home for eleven years.

  Heinrich’s first journey took him to the German port of Hamburg. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for traveling. Heinrich wrote: “The view of Hamburg . . . carried me off to seventh heaven. . . . I turned into a dreamer.” His dream, at this point in his life, was to regain his health and to rise in the world.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t find work. No one wanted an employee who coughed up blood. At last Heinrich grew so poor that he wrote to ask his uncle for help. His uncle sent money with a letter that shamed Heinrich so deeply that he promised himself: “I would never again ask a relative for aid; rather would I starve to death than beg such a man for the loan of a bread crumb.”

  He kept that promise. He also kept the money. Shortly afterward, he heard there was a ship sailing to Sout
h America, and the prospect of a job in La Guaira, Venezuela. The ship’s agent accepted Heinrich’s application gratefully. It was not easy to find young men who were willing to travel two thousand miles to a land that was best known as a breeding ground for yellow fever.

  On November 27, 1841, the ship Dorothea “flew like a seabird over the dark foamy waves.” Heinrich was bound for South America.

  But he never got there. The weather was stormy, with high winds and temperatures below zero. Around midnight on December 10, Heinrich was awakened by the captain’s shouts. Waves dashed against the boat with such force that the portholes were shattered, and water gushed in. “I barely saved my life running almost naked on deck,” wrote Schliemann. He lashed himself to the ship’s railing so that he wouldn’t be swept overboard. Snowflakes fell from the sky. He said a silent farewell to his family, prayed to God, and “gave my body over to the sharks.” The ship began to sink.

  Then, suddenly, Heinrich’s fear was swept away. He untied himself and began to climb the rigging, determined to postpone death as long as possible. As he was climbing, the broken ship rocked and pitched, sinking deep below the waves. Heinrich grabbed hold of a floating barrel. He lost consciousness. Some hours later, he awoke and found himself on a sandbank off the Dutch coast. His body was covered with bruises and deep gashes, and two of his teeth had been knocked out — but he was alive.

  Fearsome though the shipwreck was, it left Heinrich feeling optimistic. Only three men survived the wreck of the Dorothea. “God must have chosen me for great things,” he wrote. “I felt reborn.” And it is a curious fact that after his shipwreck, Heinrich was seldom troubled by ill health. He took up sea bathing. He stopped coughing up blood. Though he was a small man all his life, he was tough and hardy — and his energy was boundless.

  When Heinrich Schliemann made his way from the coast to the city of Amsterdam, he was penniless. He spoke no Dutch, and he didn’t know a soul in the city. Nevertheless, he decided to settle there.

  He found work as a kind of grown-up errand boy, carrying messages and bills around town. He lived in an attic room — freezing cold in the winter, stiflingly hot in summer. Solitary study was his only amusement, as he could not afford to go to concerts or plays. “Friendships were made in coffee-houses,” wrote Schliemann, “and since I did not visit any, I had no friend.”

  He spent every idle moment in study. He came to realize that he had a gift for languages. He memorized long passages from French and English novels, which he recited aloud. When he came to a hard passage, he shouted at the top of his lungs. Landlords and neighbors did not appreciate the Schliemann method for learning languages — several times he was forced to find new lodgings — but he persisted. He taught himself French, English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

  It must have been a lonely life, but Heinrich did not pity himself. He drew strength from his belief that he was destined for great things; he was a hero, fighting his way to fortune.

  He found a better job. He became a bookkeeper for the firm of Messrs. B. H. Schröder and Company. Though Schröder and Company traded extensively with Russia, no one spoke the language. Within six weeks, Heinrich taught himself enough Russian to write letters for the firm. By 1846, he had become the Russian agent for Schröder and Company, and moved to St. Petersburg, where he was “crowned with the fullest success.” Russian traders seemed to like the cocky young man who had mastered their language so quickly.

  Heinrich was now twenty-four years old. Five years before, he had been a penniless nobody. Now he was a prosperous merchant, and ready to marry. He wrote to the Meincke family, only to learn that his darling Minna had already married. The older Schliemann wrote that this was “the greatest disaster” that could have befallen him.

  Still, he was not altogether wretched. He loved his home in St. Petersburg. He traveled widely, going to London and Paris, Brussels, Hamburg, and Berlin. And he was earning more money all the time.

  All his life, Heinrich Schliemann craved money. He never took it for granted. Even when he was a millionaire, he was stingy with small sums of money. He liked staying in grand hotels, but he always stayed on the top floor, where the rooms were cheapest: he would rather climb six flights of stairs than pay for a room lower down. He always carried his own trunk — why waste a dollar on a porter? He could not bear for anyone to cheat him.

  On the other hand, he could be both generous and extravagant. He had a weakness for well-tailored clothes and spent a surprising amount of money to have his shirts regularly cleaned and starched. He was endlessly loyal to his family, sending ever-increasing amounts of money to his brothers, sisters, and father.

  In 1850, Heinrich learned that his brother Ludwig had died of typhoid fever in California. Ludwig Schliemann was one of the many treasure seekers who headed to California during the Gold Rush. Heinrich went to America to settle his brother’s debts and to make sure that Ludwig had a proper gravestone. Graves were always important to Heinrich — but he had another reason for going to California. Ludwig had made it clear that there were fortunes to be made in the Gold Rush. If there was money to be had, Heinrich wanted his share. Though he criticized the Californians for their “swindling,” “cunning,” and “immense love of money,” he was their equal in every way.

  One of Heinrich’s oddest lies was contrived in California. In his diary, he wrote a vivid eyewitness account of the San Francisco fire, which he claimed took place in June 1851. The fire actually took place in May, when Heinrich was elsewhere. It seems that Heinrich read about the fire in the newspapers and decided to write about it as if he had been there. He wrote his version of the story on a single sheet of paper and glued it into his diary so cunningly that it looks like one of the diary pages.

  This was a bizarre thing to do. He was not just showing off. Heinrich lied in his diary. Once again, he was changing the details of his life in order to fabricate a better story. As the hero of the story, he felt that he belonged at the Great Fire.

  Heinrich’s time in California was not wasted. He opened a bank and traded in gold dust. During the Gold Rush years, California was a hotbed of crime and disease. Heinrich, who was finicky about cleanliness, hated it — but he stayed in California long enough to double his fortune.

  His journey home was catastrophic. When Heinrich reached the Atlantic coast of Panama, he learned that his ship had just left for Europe. There would be no other ship for weeks to come. He was stranded in a place where there was no shelter and no food.

  It rained without stopping for two weeks. The land teemed with scorpions and rattlesnakes. Heinrich camped under the palm trees with 2,500 other wretched travelers. No one had dry clothes, and there was no way to kindle a fire. A few resourceful souls were able to kill monkeys, iguanas, and turtles, which had to be eaten raw. Hundreds of people died. The mosquitoes gnawed at the survivors, making sleep impossible. Heinrich wrote, “I lay more dead than alive. . . . In this horrible situation all human feeling forsook us. . . . Crimes were perpetuated among us; crimes so terrible! that . . . I cannot think of it without cold and trembling horror.”

  He never explained what the crimes were. But once again, Heinrich survived. He was alive and kicking when the next ship came. He paid for a cabin onboard without haggling over the price, gulped down beef tea, and slept in dry bedclothes for the first time in two weeks. Once again, luck had sustained him, and he sailed home to St. Petersburg with a fortune and no injury worse than a wounded leg.

  When Heinrich returned to Russia, he began to think seriously about marriage. He proposed to several women, all of whom rejected him. At last his choice fell on Ekaterina Petrovna Lyshina, the daughter of a business acquaintance. Heinrich had proposed to Ekaterina before his trip to America, but she had refused him. Heinrich was not attractive to women, with his small frame and round head. During his journey, he had grown no better-looking; he had, however, become very rich. Ekaterina accepted the millionaire’s proposal, and they were married.

  It w
as a bitterly unhappy marriage. Heinrich married for love. Ekaterina married for money. Neither of them got what they wanted. Heinrich nagged and scolded his wife over every penny she spent. Ekaterina grew to hate the sight of her husband. In spite of their misery, they had three children: a son named Sergei, born in 1855, and two daughters, Natalia and Nadezhda, born in 1858 and 1861.

  During the next eleven years, Heinrich made more and more money. He continued to invest in groceries and luxuries. He bought large supplies of saltpeter, brimstone, and lead to sell to the Russian military during the Crimean War. “All through the war,” Heinrich admitted, “I thought of nothing but money.” His greatest solace was study. When he was not increasing his fortune, he continued to teach himself languages: Slovenian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Latin, and Greek.

  It was Greek that led him to a new world. From the very first, his relationship with the Greek language was a love affair. He was drunk with the beauty of the words. “How is it possible for any language to be so noble!” he wondered. He filled thirty-five copybooks with exercises in Greek. He read and reread Homer’s poems The Iliad and The Odyssey until he knew long sections by heart. Homer’s world of heroic splendor captured his imagination so totally that he carried the books with him wherever he went.

  Heinrich began to tire of business. In his exercise books, he wrote, “I cannot remain a merchant any longer.” And: “How is it that I who have made three fortunes am so miserably unhappy?”

  The decision to give up business was not an easy one. His success in the marketplace assured him that he was worthwhile — a man of substance. Outside the world of business, he was a nobody once more. He would have to invent himself all over again.

  He began his new life by circling the globe. He visited countries that were all but unknown to most Europeans. During his world tour, he put up with bad weather, rough roads, and nasty food, but high prices never failed to rouse his sense of outrage.