5 Monday, August 10, 1970 1955-56 In his third semester at Göttingen, Miki found his favorite philosophy course to date: a proseminar on Schelling, given by a professor named Ludwig Witte. Witte’s focus was on Schelling’s last major work, the Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, and while he assigned the reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the essay, his own was strikingly different. He also noted that Schelling’s essay was published around the same time as his friend Goethe’s Faust – what we now think of as Part One – and asked if anyone in the class also attended Professor Ettinghaus’s lecture course on Goethe, with emphasis on Faust, that was given at the time. Miki was the only one to raise his hand, and Professor Witte invited him for a chat after class. As he was reading – or rather rereading – Part One for the Goethe class, he could not help visualizing Brigitte every time Gretchen entered the action, and along with her, as Faust, Mephistopheles and Marthe, the fellow students with whom she had performed the garden scene. What a great Gretchen she would make! As he entered Part Two, however, the work no longer felt to him like a play, but a philosophical writ. It was in dramatic form, but there was nothing new about that: Plato’s dialogues came before Aristotle’s treatises. Goethe’s genius was that he made an overeducated, all-too-human Faust, rather than a superhuman Socrates, the spokesman of his philosophy. Already in his first reading of Part One, in the tenth grade before leaving for Israel, it had seemed to him than when Faust spoke of the two souls dwelling in his breast, he was making a philosophical statement about the German people, one of whose souls engendered the likes of Goethe, Schelling and Beethoven, and the other Hitler. He never forgot the time, a short time after the war, when he heard a fragment of the Eroica on the radio and decided that he could not hate a nation that could produce such beauty, despite the evils that it had committed. In Part Two, he was struck most particularly by what Faust had to say about freedom: For this is wisdom’s final writ: Alone does he deserve, like life, his freedom, Who daily has to conquer it. He compared this with what Schelling had to say: “Only he who has tasted freedom can feel the desire to make over everything in its image, to spread it throughout the whole universe.” Miki recognized himself in both statements. He had tasted freedom, literally, in the form of a Cadbury’s chocolate bar that a conquering British soldier had given him on April 15, 1945; and, ever since then, in his daily struggle to find himself as a free person in the world. And, yes, he felt the desire that Schelling spoke of. *      *     * That Monday was, in principle, Brigitte’s last free day before she was to begin going regularly to the NDR studio. But the day’s freedom meant, to her, that she was free to go shopping for clothes for the upcoming autumn. Even after she became a major star, she continued to buy her clothes off the rack, with the confidence that, with her body, anything in her size would fit her with minimal, if any, alterations, and look splendid on her. She could enter any one of her preferred boutiques and know that, while she would of course be recognized, her privacy would be respected, Hamburgers being Hamburgers. Over the past two years, her favorite boutique had become one owned by a young woman in her twenties, who had learned her trade in New York and Paris but came back home to Hamburg to open her business. This young woman, who called herself Jil Sander, sold both her own designs and those of Parisian couturiers. Brigitte found that Jil Sander could not only follow trends but anticipate them, and precisely in ways that suited Brigitte. It was not unusual for her to walk into the shop and find several outfits on the rack that she could walk right out with. The only problem was which one to choose, for while Brigitte could by now easily afford to say, “I’ll take them all,” she had not lost the Silesian frugality that was her heritage. Fashions had been changing drastically that year, as the swinging sixties gave way to the eclectic seventies. Skirt lengths were no longer confined to a choice between mini and granny, but allowed any length in between, Twiggy showed up on magazine covers in balloon trousers and knee-high boots, and dresses were now based on exotic garments such as kaftans, kimonos, muumuus, or djellabas. To Miki, Brigitte looked best in the simple, fitted, short-skirted style to which he had been accustomed and which, in his opinion, was the most flattering to her spectacular body without being too provocative. But he acknowledged that as a woman in the public eye, she had to obligation to keep up with fashion, and, as a German star, to show off her country’s designs. And this time she needed several outfits to fill her autumn wardrobe. Miki liked accompanying Brigitte on her shopping expeditions. He enjoyed watching her come out of the fitting room in one breathtaking outfit after another. She would ask him for his opinion and he, knowing full well that his opinion would have no influence on what she would buy, would give a pretentious assessment in which he would sound like an art historian, or an archeologist, or a social critic, as the mood would strike him. It was enough to send both Brigitte and the saleswoman into peals of laughter. On that morning, Brigitte knew that Miki was preoccupied and that he was holding something back from her. She did not pry, but as she was getting ready to leave, she asked him, “Are you sure that you feel like coming shopping with me?” “Why wouldn’t I?” he asked, feigning nonchalance. “You seem to have things on your mind. That big essay of yours, for example.” Thank God, he thought. Let her think it’s the essay, for the time being. “Yes,” he said, “that is on my mind, but I have it under control. I’ll get back to work on it this afternoon, but going shopping with you and then having lunch out together will be a nice distraction.” With her high-heeled pumps on her feet she came over to him and kissed him. “Okay, Herr Chauffeur, let’s go.” *      *     * In the summer semester, the Goethe course was followed by a proseminar that was devoted to Faust II only and was led by Erich Klohse, who was Ettinghaus’s assistant and was completing his habilitation under him. In this proseminar many of the scenes were acted out by the students, and Gretchen’s lines were invariably read by a lively young woman named Margot Wallmann, who had curly brown hair and sparkling dark eyes, and who was a fourth-year student with psychology as her major subject. Early in the semester Miki would occasionally chat with Margot before or after class, but as the term went on it became more and more clear that Klohse was interested in her, and once the spring weather became conducive to strolling, Margot and Klohse would walk out together as soon as class was over. There is, in Germany, a centuries-old tradition that students, after finishing their basic studies at a university (in one or two years), continue their studies at other universities, usually more than one. One need only look up the biographies of famous Germans, even the short ones that appear in one-volume encyclopedias, to read: Goethe – Leipzig, Strasbourg, Frankfurt; E.T.A. Hoffmann – Königsberg, Glogau, Berlin; Alexander von Humboldt – Frankfurt on the Oder, Göttingen, Hamburg, Freiberg, Jena; Kurt Schumacher – Halle, Leipzig, Berlin, Münster. Even those who come from abroad to study in Germany often follow the pattern. José Ortega y Gasset, already armed with a doctorate in Madrid, came to Germany for two years, and during that time he attended Leipzig, Nuremberg, Berlin and Marburg. For the student Michael Wilner, who in that semester was completing his basic studies and due to take the intermediate examination in his major subject of philosophy and in his first minor subject of German literature, the decision about where to continue his studies was left to hinge on the career of the actress Brigitte Wilner, who was not yet his wife but soon would be, and who, at the same time, was completing her acting studies in Hanover. Brigitte’s talent was, by then, recognized to such an extent that she was exempted from the preliminary parts of the examination, and the final examination for the actress diploma was a mere formality. There was no doubt that she would receive an offer of engagement from the Hanover State Theater. But she – or rather they – had decided that the capital of Lower Saxony, for all its distinction in the history of German theater, was too provincial, and felt too much like home. It was where, in a cultural sense, they grew up; it was where they had seen their first opera (Carmen), and their first play with major stars in the cast (Ibsen’s Ghosts, with Curt Goetz and Valerie Martens). It was time to move on. Munich, Hamburg, West Berlin – those were exciting places, and they all had excellent universities. A tempting offer came from an unexpected source: ARD, the recently formed consortium of public broadcasting systems in West Germany, with headquarters in Frankfurt. The company had been gathering an ensemble for the production of short films for television, and Brigitte was invited to join. The proposed salary was significantly greater than any theater company had offered. She saw no reason not to accept, but she checked with Miki just to be sure. He said, “Of course!” In Frankfurt, they would be living together, for the first time, as adults. Brigitte would be geographically close, for the first time in four years, to her sister. Renate and Jürgen were no longer living in Frankfurt proper – they had moved to a small house in a suburb, and were planning to marry in July – but they would still be close. To Miki, Frankfurt also meant the Frankfurt School, the Institute for Social Research that was once again headed by Adorno and Horkheimer, back from their American exile. When he told Professor Witte of the prospect, the professor greeted it enthusiastically, and told him that one of Horkheimer’s assistants, starting that year, would be young man named Habermas, who had recently written a dissertation on Schelling that Witte, a Schelling specialist, had found brilliant. Because the filming would begin at the beginning of August, in time for showings starting in September, they would have to move in July, immediately after Miki’s examinations, and barely in time to attend Renate and Jürgen’s wedding. There would be no summer vacation for them that year. When all the arrangements for their move had been made, including an apartment in Frankfurt, Miki said, “There is only one thing left to do.” “What is it?” Brigitte asked. “Getting married, Frau Wilner.” As though this proposal had been the most natural thing in the world, Brigitte’s response was, “How about a double wedding with Renate and Jürgen? Then mother will need to take only one trip to Frankfurt.” Miki laughed. “Well, we should probably find out what kind of arrangements they have made. What if theirs is a church wedding?” “I see your point,” she said. “But it could be around the same time.” “Of course.” *      *     * Brigitte ended up buying six different outfits in what were billed as the new autumn styles. There were three dresses: a simple long-sleeved, knee-length one in black silk, a low-cut short-sleeved one in mauve with a matching bolero, and a long sleeveless one in a bluish off-white that was almost a ball gown. There were two pantsuits in the style of Courr`ges, a gray one with a short-sleeved jacket and a navy-blue one with a long-sleeved jacket. Lastly, there was a brown, calf-length skirted suit, which Miki liked the least. As was her custom, she declined the offer to have the clothes delivered to her house. “I have my livery man here,” she said, pointing to Miki. They took the packages to the garage where his car was parked, placed some of them in the trunk and others on the backseat, and went to lunch. The shopping had made them hungry, and they ate copiously. As soon as they got home and Miki took the boxes to Brigitte’s room, she kissed him and said, “You’re excused for now.” But it was not meant to be for a long time. The brief demonstrations of Brigitte’s new clothes that took place in the shops were, as usual, only the previews of coming attractions. The full displays took place later, at home, when each outfit would be matched with the appropriate shoes and accessories – some jewelry here, a scarf there – and worn in a way that fitted its function: a business meeting with a producer for the pantsuit, a television interview for the revealing dress with the bolero, a press conference for the skirted suit. Brigitte and Miki would improvise scenes in which he would play the relevant interlocutor, and while he knew better than to try to match her acting skill, he compensated with jokes. The final scene in these performances of intimate theater was, typically, a reenactment – improvised anew each time, in accordance with the day’s events – of The Emperor’s (transposed to The Empress’s) New Clothes, with the predictable dénouement on the sofa of Brigitte’s room. It was only during her periods that this scene would be canceled. On this day, with her period past due, Miki was not sure if the scene would take place. For the briefest of moments, while she was lingering in her closet, his mind dwelled on the significance that a wife’s overdue period held for most young couples. But then she came out, wearing high-heeled shoes and nothing else except a good sampling of her fairly small – by film-star standards – but exquisite jewelry collection, to which Miki’s contribution was scant. Except for one heirloom and a number of unusual pieces that she had bought herself, most of them were gifts from producers after she had worn them in a screen role. He willingly let his mind and his senses be overcome by the splendor of her body, illuminated by the August afternoon light reflected and refracted by the jewels. *      *     * Brigitte’s first paycheck from ARD came – even before she began working – in July, a week after their wedding at the Frankfurt civil registry. Except for the troublesome news of Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, it was the happiest moment of Miki’s life. The wedding itself was a simple, barebones affair, with only Renate, Jürgen, Helga, Bruno, and a representative of the Jewish community – an acquaintance of Leon’s – as Miki’s witness, in attendance. The simplicity was belied by the surroundings: a magnificent hall in the medieval Löwenstein House, which, along with the rest of the city-hall complex whose center was the Römer, had been recently rebuilt after the wartime destruction. A few days before, they had received a wedding gift from Leon: a draft – issued to Michael Wilner – for a thousand Canadian dollars. Brigitte insisted on regarding the gift as being Miki’s, just as her gift from her mother – an antique garnet-and-diamond brooch that had been her Jewish great-grandmother’s – was hers. They consequently pooled their money to buy a car, a DKW 3=6, and treated themselves to a ten-day-long honeymoon in which they drove down the Rhine and through the Westphalian castle country, then kept driving north to Norden. There they left the car and took the ferry to Norderney, where they spent five days. The hotel where they had stayed three years before, and where Miki decided to spend the rest his life with Brigitte, was – to the deep regret of the owners, who remembered them fondly – fully booked, and they had to make do with another, which was both more expensive and not nearly as pleasant as the first. Nonetheless they found Norderney, on their first visit as vacationers, delightful, and Miki promised that he would henceforth, good travel agent that he was, reserve a room at the right hotel. On their return to Frankfurt Brigitte had to begin work immediately on the first of the four films that she was to make that year. Miki, on the other hand, had two months left until the start of the winter semester. He used the time to explore Frankfurt, whose old city was experiencing an orgy of reconstruction, but of whose historic ghetto not a trace was left. He also searched for traces of Goethe, but while he found his name everywhere, he could not find his spirit amid the crass commercialism of the burgeoning Economic Miracle, whose center was precisely here in Frankfurt, the seat of the Bank of German States and of Germany’s main stock exchange. It was a paradox that this bastion of capitalism was where, at the Institute where he was soon to study, Marxist thought had its main hub in the West, and this at a time when socialist parties in Europe were abandoning their Marxist foundations. But Miki liked paradoxes, and eagerly looked forward to the start of the academic year. He had heard from Witte that Adorno was a noted practitioner and theorist of music, and thought it appropriate that he should refresh his musical skills, which had been neglected in Göttingen. Brigitte, likewise, did not want to neglect her singing, but, since none of the films she was to be in had any music, this would have to be practiced at home. They bought an ancient but well-preserved – and still tunable – upright piano, whose front panel still showed the screw holes where the candlesticks had once been attached. He also bought a cookbook and began to practice cooking, for the first time in his life. Brigitte spent most of her days, evenings included, at the studio, in a building that had been erected to house the Bundestag at a time when Frankfurt aspired to become the federal capital. She also took most of her meals there. On the evenings when they had dinner together, he had practiced enough to make presentable dishes. But if they were to go out for the evening on a weekday, there would be no time for dinner at home, and a light dinner in a restaurant would be in order. *      *     * He realized that, once Hanna was in Hamburg, his time for working on his essay would be limited. That evening, there was a French film scheduled to be shown on television that he had wanted to watch with Brigitte – it was Truffaut’s Baisers volés, which they had not seen – but he decided to forgo it, and excused himself. “It’s probably too sentimental for you anyway,” Brigitte said. “You don’t mean ‘too sexy,’ do you?” he shot back. “Not yet,” she said. Back at his desk, he read over what he had on the sheet that was on the platen. It was time to get more specific. To this category of movements belong the various outgrowths of the 68 movement and the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition here in Germany, including the Communist Party/Marxist-Leninist and the newly formed group (which calls itself “Red Army Faction”) led by Andreas Baader since his escape from prison; the likewise newly formed group led by Renato Curcio in Italy, which last spring distributed leaflets in Milan in which it called itself “Red Brigades”; and the Japanese Red Army, which a few months ago hijacked an airplane and has openly announced future violent activity. The popularity of the reference to the Red Army is noteworthy. The young people who join these guerrilla gangs seem to believe that they are engaged in a war against evil that is comparable to the one that Stalin waged against Hitler after their pact went sour, though it strains credulity to find any resemblance between these ragtag groups and the enormous, disciplined fighting force that Stalin organized. As the optimism of the student movement of 1968 recedes, and as the emptiness of such slogans as Il est interdit d’interdire and Power to the people becomes transparent, more and more young people will be drawn to movements where words are accompanied by action, possibly violent, with which they can express their opposition to things as they are. (There is no need for the words and the action to be consistent with each other.) How far this will go, no one knows, but given the nature of this kind of “oppositional” fanaticism, the likelihood of guerrilla violence in the 1970s, in Europe and elsewhere, is great. He noticed that he had been using ‘fanatical’ and ‘radical’ almost interchangeably. Was that justified? He went on. The alert reader will have noticed that I have been using ‘fanatical’ and ‘radical’ almost interchangeably. This, again, is contingent on the postmodern context. In France the Radical Party is the party of such rational men as Pierre Mendès France and Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, but they are modern men. But it is a part of the postmodern mindset that in order to be radical it is necessary to be fanatical in one’s radicalism. All right, he said to himself, I’m done with page eight. Enough for today. He felt satisfied with his progress. He turned the typewriter off, and when the hum vanished he could hear the French dialogue that was still wafting in the living room. He joined Brigitte on the living-room sofa. On the screen Jean-Pierre Léaud was shown in bed with a lovely young actress whom Miki had not seen before. He and Brigitte exchanged glances, but before their attention returned to the television set the scene had changed, and the couple was strolling in the park. A strange-looking man approached them and declared his love for the girl, telling her that his love was “definitive,” unlike the “provisional” love of “provisional people”. (Was he a postmodern fanatic of love talking about the mass-people?) After he walked away, the girl – named Christine – said that the man must be mad. Léaud’s character, named Antoine just as he had been in Les Quatre cents coups, says, “Yes, he must be.” Fin. “You know,” Brigitte said to Miki, “Delphine Seyrig was in this film. Do you remember how, in the Bad Ischl film, I parodied her performance in Marienbad? Well, in this one she seemed to be parodying herself.” “Perhaps some day you will be parodying yourself,” Miki said. “Or, better yet, parodying your parody of Delphine Seyrig.” “Or perhaps she can parody me parodying her, and so on…” “Ad infinitum!” Miki shouted. By this time they were laughing uncontrollably. From the way Brigitte moved her body as she laughed, Miki knew that her period was still overdue. He found the knowledge most welcome.