Der Wasserbund

Johnson: Back in December, a disturbing encounter occurred about two hours after the weekly Third Eye Over Iowa meeting broke up at Iowa City's Dublin Underground. Three of us were busily drowning a fine point of history in a butt of Guiness when the young well-dressed man seated on a nearby barstool drunkedly hissed at us. When we looked at him, he proudly displayed the cover of the latest Playboy magazine.

     After our response of faint, patronizing praise, the man lurched drunkedly off his stool and slid in among us at our booth, dropping the magazine squarely in the middle of the table.

     "I don't have time to explain," he said nervously. He so reeked of whiskey, one us alertly moved his lighted cigarette away from him. The young man continued, "Your time is growing short. They're not going to pussyfoot around this time---it's going to be something big." When we asked what he was talking about, he tapped the magazine with his finger, saying "The first thing you see---it's all in there." Abruptly he staggered away; up the steps onto the street.

     That was the last we saw of him for later that week, a strange accident was brought to our attention by the Bremer County Sheriff's Department. A car crashed into a huge propane tank, causing a terrific explosion. It was no miracle that the driver was not killed because there was no driver. However, police found the body of a young well-dressed man in the trunk, killed by the combined concussion of the crash and explosion. As there was no other possible explanation but murder, Bremer authorities were trying to piece together the victim's movements over the past few weeks. They circulated his photo through the office and we soon recognized him. Police informed us his name was Stephen Rheinholtz of Zoar. We, however, omitted telling them about the magazine he gave us and an editorial team quickly banded to study every aspect of Rheinholtz's Playboy magazine.

     We sifted everything. Twice. Sometimes thrice. Every stupid party joke, every banal review, every glossy vodka and rum ad but still we found nothing. Only then did we recall Rheinholt'z hasty messge: "The first thing you see---it's all in there." Instantly we realized he meant the centerfold!

     It was only after a lamp's glare caught the photo at just the right angle did we see them! A round microdot had been carfully glued over each of her nipples. We were speechless with amazement and in a few hours, we made an astounding discovery.

     Ever since last year's fire at the Mill Resturant and the string of arsons near our homes (see: Are We In Danger?, June, 1997, vol. 4, Issue #6 & Arson Fires Delay Publication, July, 1997, vol. 4, Issue #7), we doggedly pursued a number of leads, one in particular involving a little known German Hydrologist Engineering organization known cryptically as "Der Wasserbund". The microdots we discovered contained secret contracts and other documents each marked with the Wasserbund's heraldic crest of a fist rising out of water. To be sure, it is not a symbol alien to the rich and powerful for it has enjoyed a long and dangerous history in this state for the past century. Many times it has played the silent and shadowy hand of fate shaping this nation's political and economic landscape (consider the career of West Branch's most famous son, President Herbert Hoover who was an engineer long before entering politics).

     As its name implies, the Wasserbund did not arise in Iowa, but in Germany. In 1842, a tariff alliance called the Zollverein was forged allowing free trade among the fractious states of the German Confederation. Among the backers of this historic agreement were a group of wealthy businessmen and engineers from Baden in southern Germany. This group of men created an informal financial alliance called "Der Wasserbund" as a means to gain a monopoly control of water rights in canals throughout the rivers draining into the Rhine. These rivers supplied water to canals which inturn supplied water power to various industries---iron works, flour mills, textile mills, etc. In 1848, The Karlsruhe and Stuttgart newspapers denounced the Wasserbund as "The Incontinentii" (alleging them as neo-industrial versions of the Illuminati) and blamed them for masterminding King Frederick of Prussia's refusal "to pick up a crown from the gutter," and precipitating the failure of the Frankfort Assembly. These allegations may have been true for while the Wasserbund applauded a united Germany they bitterly opposed one under Prussian or Austrian leadership. After several Wasserbund-owned mills were burned, the Duke of Swabia intervened and warned the newspaper publishers that "the hand holding the match is easily burned." Their denunciations abruptly ceased.

     Over the years, the Wasserbund flourished, gobbling up water rights, factories, and mills along the entire length of the Rhein, Neckar, Main, and Mosel rivers. In late January 1870, the Wasserbund sent Konrad Augustus von Hötz to Paris to receive water rights granted by the Emperor Napoleon III in France along the Muese, Marne, and Seine in return for funding the French invasion of Mexico in 1862. At this time, though, the Emperor sought to out maneuver King Wilhelm I of Prussia over the vacant Spanish throne and he needed allies---especially wealthy allies. The Emperor presented von Hötz with a small scorched oaken chest. The box allegedly bore the crest of the Knights Templar. Some accounts have it that the box contained nothing more than antique manuscripts intended as curiosities for the Duke of Swabia. Others have it that a false bottom was discovered in the box and inside lay a simple earthen cup braced and rimmed with gold and silver bands.

     Shortly after von Hötz presented the box to the Wasserbund's five governors at the "Vershutten Haus" in Karlsruhe, the Wasserbund's fortunes swung towards disaster. In mid-April, the Duke of Swabia publically denounced the Wasserbund as traitors to the Fatherland. When a Wasserbund member's engineering maps of France were seized by Prussian troops, the five Wasserbund governors made plans to evacuate Wasserbund members and their families, a total of 578 people, from Germany. But by the time the Wasserbund's spies in Berlin reported that both Bismarck and Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia were moving against them, the operation to break and eradicate the Wasserbund was already well underway.

     In the early morning of July 19, 1870, the very day which would see France declare war on Prussia, an elite corps of the Prussian "Death's Head" Hussars fanned out from Essen to Stuttgart to arrest some Wasserbund members and liquidate others---including the five governors and von Hötz. Von Hötz, himself a member of the Death's Head Hussars in his youth, his family and twenty nine other families (170 people in all) elluded their pursuers and rendezvoused in Rotterdam. There, von Hötz contacted a family friend who was a Lieutenant of the Royal Highland Regiment (Blackwatch) which the official papers of Disraeli (then Lord Beaconsfield) identify as a "young Lieutenant MacNiall". Little is known about Lt. MacNiall save that he grew quite taken with von Hötz's band whom scholars have described as "poor refugees but aristocratic in bearing and manners." Von Hötz, meanwhile, was shortly found floating in a canal outside the city, his throat slashed by a cavalry sabre. Rotterdam was no longer safe.

     Once in Iowa, the Wasserbund families quietly reestablished the cartel. In a short time, their fortunes snowballed and following the turn of the century, they controlled a large number of mills along both sides of the Mississippi and commanded a significant chunk of political capital in the midwest.

     Ever since the Wasserbund fled Germany, membership has been limited solely to those decendants of those 30 families. And it is this sort of exclusive control over some much wealth and power that has fostered fantastic rumors. Some people claim that it single handedly started the Cold War---either for its own gain or a deluded notion of destiny. Others insist the strange wooden chest from Napoleon III, supposedly lost, is in their possession and contains the Holy Grail. A secret report allegedly exists in certain smoke-filled rooms of the Pentagon that the Wasserbund is covertly building an army of Jesus Christs, all cloned from a tiny fillament of tissue stolen from the Shroud of Turin.

     Perhaps these rumors may not be so fantastic after all. The documents we uncovered on the microdots detailed the dispersal of billions of dollars from foreign bank accounts to a vast number of projects, some involving The University of Emmetsburg Aerodyne Jet Propulsion Labs, the Alternate Reality Project, Tesla Labs, Smackenhovel Inc., Punchashanti Systems of New Dehli, India, the Ab.Gesellschaft FFF, and the Russian Orthodox fraternal organization in Polk County known as The Golden Fist of Wonders.

     Two projects in particular caught our attention. Identified as "24597Cinder" and "1016797Firewall", we realized we had the evidence that this organization had made both attempts on our lives.

     We also had a name.

     We must emphasize had here because as of Friday, May 15, we are no longer have the either the microdots or copies of the documents. Sensing their incredible import, both were cached in a small, unobstrusive warehouse east of Iowa City used last year during the arson scare. Who could have known that by 6 PM that evening, a tornado would plow a furrow a quarter of a mile wide across the state, leveling houses, killing cows, and blasting small warehouses and their contents into the sky.

     Cooincidence? Readers have noticed lately that their monthly installments of Third Eye Over Iowa have arrived very late and frequently opened. The April issue was even destroyed before it reached the printers. We can only conclude the Wasserbund has been monitoring our activies far more attentively than we dared dream.

     So now our proof is gone. But not our resolve or our courage. The name of the man who authorized "24597Cinder" and "1016797Firewall" was Charlie Hotz.