Portrait of Max Dittmar-Pittmann from his "memoirs"
Memoirs or Pure Fabrication?
In 1926 Max Dittmar-Pittmann, Captain (retired), published his memoirs entitled Ein Menschenalter auf dem Meere. Erlebnisse und Abenteuer eines alten Seemanns ("A Lifetime on the Sea. Experiences and Adventures of an Old Seaman"). The preface to this slim volume of 124 pages points out that while many books are published on the subject of adventurous stories set both on land and on the sea, they are to a large extent pure fabrication. By contrast Max Dittmar-Pittmann's memoirs, based on diaries he kept, are recording the events he describes truthfully and without any embellishment. When he concludes by reassuring the readers that they 'can rest in the certainty that even the most unusual of the recounted adventures really occurred and in the way described' one wonders why he has to press this point quite so strongly.
His life, as Max Dittmar-Pittmann describes it, was indeed full of fantastic and incredible adventures: storms, shipwrecks, and exotic places all feature strongly in his tale. That at least part (if not all) of his life's story is pure fabrication becomes clear in the last chapter of the book in which Dittmar-Pittmann describes his time as the Third Officer of the Titanic.
The style of the book is, however, at least from a modern perspective, strangely bland. The fact that he mentions hardly any dates or names, both people and ships are usually referred to by their initial, was a not an unknown practice at the time. However, this makes it almost impossible to check any of the information he gives.
It is possible, that Dittmar-Pittmann had some experience on the sea, it is equally possible, he just read enough to write convincingly enough for unsuspecting readers. Susanne Störmer has attempted to find out more about Max Dittmar-Pittmann, but - also due to German privacy laws - has been unable to do so. (s. Susanne Störmer, Titanic. Eine Katastrophe zwischen Kitsch, Kult und Legende (Books on Demand GmbH, Elmshorn, 2000), p. 29)
After the publication of his memoirs, Dittmar-Pittmann gave lectures about his life and particularly about his time on the Titanic. It would be interesting to know whether the probably more detailed description of the sinking of the Titanic is the basis for the strikingly similar description of the disaster in the two German novels about the subject published in the 1930s. One of the authors, Josef Pelz von Felinau, did know Dittmar-Pittmann personally and based his novel on Dittmar-Pittmann's 'recollections'.
Adventurous Life on Sea and Land
According to his memoirs, if we may still call them that, Max Dittmar-Pittman began his career at sea in 1879, starting as an ordinary seaman on a sailing vessel. Working both in sail and later in steam he becomes quartermaster, wireless operator and finally officer. He sails on vessels of a variety of nationalities, though more often than not, the master happens to be German. Altogether he claims to have circumnavigated the globe twenty times.
Portrait of Max Dittmar-Pittmann from his "memoirs"
Next to his career at sea, Max Dittmar-Pittmann also works as a guard at a gold mine in Venezuela and as a detective in New York and London. Once when in St John's the harbour freezes solid so suddenly that all ships in the harbour are caught by the ice. From St. John's Dittmar-Pittmann joins seal hunting parties twice, the second time his ship is crushed by ice, but they are rescued by another ship. His experiences would be echoed in the novel written by Robert Prechtl a decade later.
The Sinking of the Titanic
No doubt the most interesting part of the book is the last chapter, "Der Untergang der Titanic". While only eleven pages long, this description had a defining influence on at least three other books written about the disaster in the German speaking world: H. Hesse, Prechtl and Felinau all based parts of their stories on it.
According to his "memoirs", Max Dittmar-Pittmann became the third officer of the Titanic after bumping into an old acquaintance, Captain "W". Smith in London who invites him to join because the third officer assigned to the ship was sick. Dittmar-Pittmann immediately leaves for Southampton to join the Titanic. He includes a description of the ship, mentioning its huge size, when it was built and the number of crew and passengers the ship could hold. Some of the description is fairly accurate, some is far off: According to Dittmar-Pittmann the maximum speed of the Titanic was 25 knots, it had twelve large life-boats, 'several reserve boats and a large round raft'.
After mentioning a collision with a marine tender in Southampton, that had no consequences for the Titanic Dittmar-Pittmann glosses over the next days until, on the 13th, he informs Captain Smith, that he 'smells ice'. This information does put the Captain in a conundrum because he knows he should slow down, but the chairman of the White Star Line is aboard and expects him to win the Blue Riband for the Titanic.
Dittmar-Pittmann is off duty when the ship hits the iceberg and, due to the Titanic high speed had been travelling with, he only catches a glimpse of it far astern. While he had not been on the bridge, he states that First Officer Murdock (sic) was there as deputy to the Captain who attended a festivity. Murdock sent the Second Officer, who was officer on watch to the chart room 'contrary to regulations' to check something and prevented him from doing his duties. This, Dittmar-Pittmann claims, was what the Second Officer and the quartermaster had reported in the inquiry about the disaster. Murdock, realising the severity of the collision, then shoots himself.
Dittmar-Pittmann, naturally, at once grasps the seriousness of the situation. He climbs down to the engine room, talks to engineer Hesketh who is not aware of any problem. He thought that the sudden stopping of the engine was to allow a bearing that had run hot to cool down. Then a greaser informs him soon that the ship is taking on water.
Dittmar-Pittmann then is in charge of loading the six starboard lifeboats, four of which immediately sink after being lowered because they were overloaded and, unknown to the officers on deck, were immediately swamped by people who had already jumped into the sea. When Bruce Ismay demands a place in one of the boats, Dittmar-Pittmann puts his gun to Ismay's chest and threatens to shoot him. Ismay survives on the round raft. Several of the passengers shoot themselves in desperation.
Somehow, Dittmar-Pittmann mixes two of the iconic stories of the night up: Isidor and Ida Straus are replaced by an old German-American couple, the banker Guggenheim and his wife, who refused to leave her husband.
It is almost superfluous to say that Dittmar-Pittmann is on the last boat that left the Titanic. There are 42 women and children and four crewmen in his boat, among the women was Madelaine Astor. Dittmar-Pittmann observes the sinking of the Titanic and spots Captain Smith swimming close by. Dittmar-Pittmann asks the Captain to climb into the boat, but Smith ignores him and follows the Titanic into the deep.
The 'preliminary hearing' in the USA and the 'main hearing' in Britain, Dittmar-Pittmann writes, assigned the blame for the disaster to Bruce Ismay, for ordering that the ship maintain speed, and Captain Smith, for following the orders despite the ice warnings. The attempt to break the speed record was the cause for the great loss of life.
The Third Officer
The reason why Max Dittmar-Pittmann concluded his memoirs with a chapter about the Titanic-disaster is simple, people were interested in it. As he himself writes even the Great War had not dimmed the memory of the disaster for the contemporaries. After his previous adventures, his time on the Titanic is a spectacular conclusion to his book that could hardly be topped. Perhaps for this reason, he merely mentioned that though he retired from the sea after the sinking of the Titanic, he was back during World War I, captaining a steamer called Carbo to some more adventures in both the Baltic and the North Sea.
It was more than likely the similarity of his own name to that of the real Third Officer of the Titanic that made Max Dittmar-Pittmann put himself into his shoes. Additionally, Herbert Pitman was not as high-profile as for example Lightoller or Lowe.
Dittmar-Pittmann was only able to pull this deception off because he lived in Germany. If he had tried to do the same in the UK (and presumably in the USA), the actual surviving officers of the Titanic and probably the White Star Line would have come down on him like a ton of bricks. One also has to recall that at the time communications was a lot slower than it is today, travel between Germany and the UK less frequent and knowledge of the facts about the Titanic less widespread and more difficult to acquire than it is now.
Eventually, Max Dittmar-Pittmann was found out to be an impostor, unfortunately I have not discovered when or how his exposure occured, and what consequences, if any, it had.
The influence his book, Ein Menschenalter auf dem Meere. Erlebnisse und Abenteuer eines alten Seemanns had on the depiction of the Titanic disaster are discussed in detail in the following chapters:
More fictional memoirs: Hesse, H., Der Untergang der Titanic. Bericht eines Überlebenden
Some resemblence, but a different name: Third Officer Erikson, Robert Prechtl, Der Untergang der Titanic
Formerly known as Max Dittmar Pittmann: Third Officer Hans Erik Petersen, Josef Pelz von Felinau, Titanic
Return to Fictional Officer of the Titanic
* I am indebted to Susanne Störmer who discussed the phenomenon of Max Dittmar-Pittmann with me several years back. She also writes about it in her book Titanic. Eine Katastrophe zwischen Kitsch, Kult und Legende (Books on Demand GmbH, Elmshorn, 2000).