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. Wittes focus was on Schellings last major
work, the Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, and
while he assigned the reading of Heideggers interpretation of the essay, his
own was strikingly different. He also noted that Schellings essay was
published around the same time as his friend Goethes Faust what we
now think of as Part One and asked if anyone in the class also attended
Professor Ettinghauss 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: Platos
dialogues came before Aristotles treatises. Goethes 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 wisdoms 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 Cadburys
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, Brigittes last free day
before she was to begin going regularly to the NDR studio. But the days
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, Ill 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
countrys 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 wouldnt 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 its the essay, for the time being. Yes, he said, that is on my
mind, but I have it under control. Ill 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, lets 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 Ettinghauss assistant and was completing his habilitation under him. In
this proseminar many of the scenes were acted out by the students, and
Gretchens 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.
Brigittes 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
(Ibsens 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 Horkheimers 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 Mikis examinations, and
barely in time to attend Renate and Jürgens 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, Brigittes 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 Brigittes room, she kissed him and said, Youre
excused for now. But it was not meant to be for a long time. The brief
demonstrations of Brigittes 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 days events of The Emperors
(transposed to The Empresss) New Clothes, with the predictable
dénouement on the sofa of Brigittes 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 wifes
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 Mikis
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.
* * *
Brigittes 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 Nassers nationalization of the
Suez Canal, it was the happiest moment of Mikis 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 Leons as Mikis
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 Mikis, just as her
gift from her mother an antique garnet-and-diamond brooch that had been her
Jewish great-grandmothers 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
Germanys 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 Truffauts Baisers volés, which they had not seen but he
decided to forgo it, and excused himself.
Its probably too
sentimental for you anyway, Brigitte said.
You dont 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 dinterdire 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 ones radicalism.
All right, he
said to himself, Im 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. Léauds 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.
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