Dear Walther. I understand that you knew Walther von Selve. I am trying to write a short bio for www.historicracing.com but can't find out anything about his racing. Can you shed any light on this? Also I am looking for a photograph. So far I have the following which you might like to correct or comment on. ------------ Walther von Selve came from a family of industrialists of long standing; their metal works in Altena in Westphalia were among the leading in the field. Walther, born in 1876, was a racer of cars, motorcycles, and speedboats well before the turn of the century, and for two years traveled around the world. In 1911, he became general manager of the family business, which by then included also the Swiss metal works in Thun, not far from Berne. The year before, in 1910, he had married Else Wieland, the daughter of Philip Wieland and Lydia Sulzer. Part of the Selve industrial empire was the Basse & Selve engine factory, located at Altena, Westphalia. It had became famous during WWI with its six-cylinder aero engine closely resembling the 260 HP Mercedes and 230 HP Benz aero engines in most of its details. After World War I, the Northern German Automobile Works (Norddeutsche AutomobilWerke), which made the Colibri and the Sperber, was absorbed by Selve. Selve touring cars were manufactured at Hameln. The type SL, designed by ex-Daimler and Imperia engineer Ernst Lehmann, was built between 1920 and 1925, and was powered by a de-tuned version of the L-head four. A front-wheel drive 6-cylinder model designed by Henze was shown at the 1928 Berlin Automobile Exposition, but was never put into production as car manufacturing was suspended due to the economic crisis of 1929. To digress slightly, in July 1942, Benjamin Sagalowitz, the press officer of the Swiss Jewish communities headquartered in Zurich, received an urgent phone call from an acquaintance. His caller told him on that day that a German industrialist that Sagalowitz had vaguely known in the past was in town, with information of great importance. They met and Sagalowitz was told that it had come from an unimpeachable source that Hitler had decided to have all European Jews exterminated by means of poison gas by the end of the year. Churchill or Roosevelt, preferably both, should be informed immediately. Sagalowitz decided that whether the information was true or half true, no time was to be lost in transmitting it. He got in touch with Gerhart Riegner in Geneva. Riegner, aged thirty at the time, was the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland, the main listening post for events in Nazi occupied Europe. Riegner had a direct connection with Rabbi Stephen Wise in New York, who in turn had entry to the White House. Having received the news from Sagalowitz, Riegner waited for about a week, trying to obtain more information about the reliability of the source. His usual American contact in Geneva, U.S. Consul Paul C. Squire, happened to be away and so on August 8, Riegner went to see the Vice Consul, Howard Elting, Jr., and handed him a document which began as follows: Received alarming report that in Fuehrer's headquarters plan discussed and under consideration according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany numbering 3/2-4 million should after deportation and concentration in East be exterminated at one blow to resolve once and for all Jewish question in Europe. Elting sent the message to Ambassador Leland Harrison in Berne, who transmitted it to the State Department with a note that this was apparently a wild rumor inspired by Jewish fears. Reaction in Washington was even more negative, and it was decided not to convey the message to Rabbi Wise for whom it had been intended. But Riegner had taken the precaution of sending a copy through the British embassy to the London office of the World Jewish Congress. The Foreigh Office in London was also unhappy about the telegram, regarding it as grossly exaggerated and in any case not helpful to the war effort. But after some initial hesitation it was handed over to the World Jewish Congress, and thus Rabbi Wise in New York got it finally on August 28, 1942. Wise was asked by the State Department not to make the message public; there was no certainty that it was correct. After all, Riegner had said in his cable, "We transmit information with all necessary reservation as exactitude cannot [be] confirmed." Rabbi Wise and the other Jewish leaders accepted this. It took three more months to establish that the Riegner cable was correct, and indeed had not gone far enough. Hitler's plan was not just "under consideration," it was already being carried out. Back to Walther von Selve or rather to Else's father, Philip Wieland, an Ulm industrialist, who was active in politics. Following the liberal tradition of Southwest Germany he joined the German Liberal (later Democratic, still later State) party and represented it in the Reichstag from 1919 to 1930. This was a Left-of-Center party; its enemies called it the "Jew party." Philip Wieland, who died in Thun in 1948 as did Walther, had many Jewish friends and acquaintances. His daughter also had pronounced democratic sympathies, and it is likely that it was through one of the members of this family that the message regarding Hitler's Final Solution origionally reached Sagalowitz. They commuted between Altena and Thun, and since their factory produced ammunition during the war they had connections with military and political circles. Old Philip Wieland was a member of the board of the central German bank, and Walther was on the board of several concerns specialising in the production of arms and explosives. ------------------------
