8
Thursday,
August 13, 1970
1958-59
In
the morning the thought that had come to him the night before came back. Was
there a psychological predisposition to fanaticism? Were there any studies in
that regard?
He would write some speculative comments on the matter in his
conclusion. Meanwhile he had to finish his discussion of fanatical nationalism,
and, in particular, the Irish situation
He had finished page 12. It
was beginning to look as if the length of the essay would be closer to twenty
than to fifteen pages. He was just now getting to the issue of Islam.
Late last
year Sinn Féin and the IRA split into provisional and official wings, and
it is the provisional wing that harbors the fanatical nationalists. Guerrilla
action has not been late in coming..
As we have seen,
postmodern nationalist movements tend to label themselves as socialist,
Marxist, or even as in the case of ETA Marxist-Leninist, though anyone who
has read Marx or Lenin would know that they would scoff at the ethnic
nationalism that these groups espouse. It requires a certain amount of
sophistry to link an ethnic groups struggle for liberation, whatever that
may mean, with the Marxian class struggle. But, once again, such an embrace of
contradictions is precisely what makes these movements postmodern.
In the case of Northern
Ireland there may be some legitimacy to a class-based orientation if the claims
of anti-Catholic discrimination on the part of the Protestant-dominated
authorities (in the distribution of housing, jobs and the like) are valid. But
with regard to most of these movements one may well suspect that, far from
representing a core belief, Marxist self-labeling is an opportunistic appeal
for support, perhaps most immediately from the leftist oppositionist groups
that I have discussed above, but more importantly, from the powers of the bloc
that calls itself socialist. If and when that bloc dissolves, or loses interest
in stirring up trouble in countries outside it, the label may well change from red
to another color.
If, in particular, an
ethnic identity is defined wholly (as in the case of the Sikhs in India) or
partly by religion, then the color could be that of the religion.
In the case of minority
nationalities that are Muslim in largely non-Muslim states (such as the Moros,
the Patani Malays and the Ogaden Somalis), this would of course be Islamic
green, since it would be a simple matter to identify the cause of national
liberation of such groups with the larger cause of jihad.
He was at the end of page 13, and on the verge of changing
paper, when suddenly his private line rang. It was just half past ten.
Dr. Wilner? Billung
speaking. There is a problem with your booking.
Yes?
I just got a call from
Lufthansa. It seems that your name is on a temporary blacklist that they got
from the BGS, and you are not allowed to leave the country.
His name? The Federal Border
Guard? There must be some confusion.
My name? he asked. Michael
Wilner with one L? Are they sure?
Oh, yes, Billung said. Name
and passport number, all in order. They said that the BGS will contact you
soon.
Thank you, Dr. Billung, but
I dont intend to wait. I am going to contact them.
Well, Dr. Wilner, I hope you
resolve this little problem in the next day or two. Your reservation is being
held for you, for the time being.
Miki tried to call Major
Patzert of the Hamburg BGS office, whom he had once interviewed in connection
with an article about immigrants from Turkey, but could not get through to him.
Eventually he was put through to an official whose name he didnt catch and who
told him that he, Michael Wilner, was involved in a police investigation about
whose nature the official knew nothing, but that Dr. Wilner would be contacted
in due time by Hamburg police.
In due time! How very German!
What could possibly be going on? Should he call Hamburg police himself? No,
that would be useless; he would certainly get the same in due time response.
If there was one thing that
made Miki Wilner anxious, it was uncertainty. He had experienced plenty of it
during his wartime childhood. He had since learned to deal with the anxiety
yoga postures, deep breathing, thinking about other matters, and, best of all,
talking about it with Brigitte but not to stave it off. Something as trivial
as a delayed flight without an estimated departure time could bring it on.
Taking a walk or a bicycle
ride might have helped, too, but if the police were going to call him at some
indefinite time, he had to be at home.
He went back to his desk and
looked over what he had written. Rather than continue on the same track, he
felt himself sidetracked by the fact that he was now in a kind of adversarial
position with the state. He began page 14.
The potential
for violence in the postmodern fanatical movements lies in the fact that, in
almost every case, they are engaged in conflict with a modern entity: the
state, to which, according to Max Weber, belongs the monopoly of violence. In
strictly modern terms, an opposition to this monopoly constitutes anarchism,
another modern concept that has been rationally formulated though in more
than one way by Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin and their followers. But the
postmodern opposition consists not of disputing the monopoly but of flouting it.
This was enough
for now, he thought. He went to the living room and sat down at the piano to
play the Beethoven Waldstein sonata that lay open on the music stand. He
played it straight through, with no repeats and at full speed, wrong notes be
damned. What would Helga have said! But the headlong rush of the first
movement, the meditative calm of the adagio and the ever-wilder dance of the
rondo suited his mood perfectly.
* * *
During his week in London, Miki Wilner found, to his
surprise and to a certain guilt-ridden annoyance with himself, that he did not
miss Brigitte as much as he thought he would.
The meeting with his uncle,
after four years, was joyful. Leon spoke to him in English, and his English
speech proved to be just as stilted as his letter had been. I am overjoyed
to see you, he said. And how is your academic progress? Miki
assured him that his progress was just fine, that he already had an idea for
his dissertation, and that he had been getting serious about a career in
journalism, something that he had already intimated to Leon in a letter. I
am very pleased, Leon said. Eventually, and spontaneously, their talk
changed to Yiddish, and then it felt like the old days.
They had dinner with some of
Leons London business associates, and a number of young people, around Mikis
age, were present as well. Some of them were working in the businesses, others
were family, and Miki never quite got it straight who was who. But it was clear
that all were Jews.
He arranged to meet the next
day with four of the young people, who for various reasons had the week free
and who would be his guides for the rest of his stay: two young men named Alan
and Jack, and two young women named Vicky and Helen. Helen, who was very pretty
in a fresh-faced, makeup-free way, was significantly younger than the others,
no more than twenty or so; she was a student at Kings College, where she read
modern history, and thought she might become a teacher. She was also the only
one in the group who did not smoke.
In almost every conversation
that Miki participated in, he was asked a question that went somewhat like
this: How can you, a Jew, a survivor and all that, live among the Germans?
When he answered that now he felt himself to be a German, he was met with
incredulity. How can that be? he was asked rhetorically. He was told
that when German Jews escaping Hitler came to Britain in the thirties and then
the war broke out, they were treated as enemy aliens and interned, until Jewish
community leaders persuaded the government, with difficulty, that these people
were Jews and that Germany did not consider them Germans. So how can you
consider yourself a German? Because I am a citizen of the Federal
Republic of Germany, he answered. Helen then suggested pertly, Then
perhaps you can be called a Germanian instead of a German, the way a citizen of
Italy is an Italian and not an Ital.
The word Ital, rhyming with little, provoked laughter, and
Alan immediately made up a limerick: There once was a woman named Gitl /
Who said, Jewish men are too little. / If I were to choose, / I wouldnt want
Jews, / Id rather make love with an Ital. Helen laughed heartily, but
Jack, who had read classics, said that Ital might be a perfectly valid
word, from the Latin Italus. Miki said that he liked the term Germanian,
and if Germany were to be reunified, he would call himself that.
He noticed, however, that on
the few occasions that he identified himself as a West German rather than
simply a German, no further questions were asked.
The four friends for it
seemed to Miki that they were that, and they never indicated what other
relationships there might be among them kept Miki busy with museums, theater
and restaurants. He became acquainted with the cuisines of China and India,
with My Fair Lady and A Taste of Honey, with the British Museum
and the National Gallery. His time with Leon was, for the most part, limited to
breakfast at the hotel. But it was a warm and happy time, in the course of
which Miki regained his fluency in Yiddish.
A few times, when he would
return to the hotel at a time that was not too late, he tried calling Brigitte
at home in Göttingen, but there was never an answer.
On the morning before the day
of his departure, Leon brought to the breakfast table a gift-wrapped package.
Something useful for a future journalist, he said. It turned out to be an
Olivetti Lettera 22 portable typewriter. I special-ordered a German
keyboard for you, Leon added.
That evening he was alone in
his hotel room, and decided to put his new toy to the test. In the desk drawer
he found some paper with the hotels letterhead. The reverse side was blank,
and he inserted a sheet, blank side up, into the typewriter. He typed, in
English,
German, West German,
Germanian
and he underlined the text. He returned the
carriage twice and went on in German, typing double-spaced..
When I travel
outside Germany and I am asked to identify myself by nationality, I normally
say that I am German. When I am asked for more details, and I reveal that I am
by birth a Polish Jew, people are perplexed.
I understand their
perplexity. It can be explained on many levels, but above all by the recent
history of relations between Germany and the Jews. People have not forgotten
that, not so many years ago, Germany, or at least the regime that ruled Germany
with wide popular support, rejected its Jews, before attempting to exterminate
them, along with any other Jews it found along its path of conquest.
Knowing all that, and
having lived through it, I have made the choice of becoming a German. It is a
choice that I wish to make known, in spite of any perplexity that it might
produce.
I would like to reveal,
however, that, during a recent stay in London, I accidentally discovered a way
of identifying myself that, for some reason, does not produce the perplexity.
I can say that I am a West
German.
Why does saying West
German instead of German produce a different response? That, too, can be
explained on several levels, because West German can be interpreted in more
than one way.
The most obvious
interpretation of West German is that of a citizen of West Germany,
officially known as the Federal Republic of Germany. That is, by calling myself
a West German I am announcing my citizenship or belonging to a state, and not
my ethnicity or belonging to a people.
He was at the
end of the page. He took out the sheet, inserted another and went on.
In the Western world, it is accepted that
citizens of a state can be of many different ethnic backgrounds. In our
neighbor France, for example, the only meaning that being French has is
citizenship in the French Republic, but French people can be of German
ethnicity (as in Alsace-Lorraine), or Breton, or Basque, or Italian (as in
Corsica), or they can come from Frances overseas possessions the Antilles,
Indochina, Africa, the Maghreb or be immigrants from Europe, even Polish Jews
like me, or their descendants. All are considered, at least in principle,
equally French.
Conversely, those who
might be considered ethnically but not politically French the Walloons of
Belgium, the Romands of Switzerland, the Valdôtains of Italy do not, in fact,
regard themselves as French at all.
The situation, as we know
well, is quite different to our east. There, all the ethnic Germans the
Sudeten Germans, the Transylvanian Saxons, the Banat Swabians and so on have
always been Germans first, and only secondarily citizens of whichever state or
empire might, at any point in history, lay claim to their loyalty. The same is
true of all the other ethnic nationalities living there Magyars, Poles, and
so on.
He thought back
to Niemanns seminar on the history of nationalism.
It was
already pointed out by Meinecke and before him by F.J. Neumann that there
exist two different concepts of the nation: state nation and cultural nation.
It was the Austrian chancellor of the twenties, Ignaz Seipel (who was also a
political scientist and a theologian), who pointed out the east-west division
of the concept, and postulated the existence of a dividing line. He also noted
that his own Austria lies to the east of the line (he regarded Austria as a
German state outside the Reich) and Switzerland to the west, so that the
Austrian-Swiss border, if one disregards Liechtenstein, is a well-defined
segment of the line. If, then, we extend the line northward, it goes right
through Germany, thus producing another east-west division of our land.
The last
paragraph was a long one, and he needed to insert yet another sheet in the
middle of it.
Can such an extension
be formed literally? If so, then it would coincide, at least initially, with
the border between Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, and would imply that those
who live in the former are, in the Seipel sense, easterners, and those in the
latter, westerners. While it is true that the foremost advocates of a cultural
and not political definition of German nationality were true easterners, such
as the Saxon Fichte, the Prussian Wilhelm von Humboldt, and the Thuringian
Ranke, their position is not so different from that of the Württemberger
Schiller when he writes that the German empire and the German nation are two
different things.
In reality, then, Seipels
line, when it enters the territory of Germany, becomes a philosophical and not
a geographic line. In the Seipelian sense, a West German is one who regards
himself primarily as a citizen of a state of Germany, and an East German is one
who identifies with the German people.
Medieval historians have
proposed yet another division. They define western Germany as the land that was
populated by German tribes in Carolingian days, and eastern Germany as the land
that was originally populated by Slavs. The dividing line is, at least in part,
the middle course of the Elbe, and coincides roughly with the final line of the
Red Armys western front, as though the land that was Slavic a thousand years
ago had to be occupied (liberated) by Slavs. But if this division has any
contemporary relevance, it is not easy to discern.
He was now on
the fourth page. It was time to conclude..
For myself, I
can say that I am a West German in every one of the meanings I have discussed.
But what will I call
myself if and when Germany is reunified?
An English acquaintance
suggested a new term, Germanian, to designate a citizen of Germany who may or
may not be ethnically German; it is related to Germany in the same way that
Italian is related to Italy.
In German, one could
introduce the term Deutschländer, related to Deutschland in the same way that
Engländer is related to England or that Holländer is related to Holland.
In this way, Danes in
South Schleswig or Sorbs in Lusatia could refer to themselves as Deutschländer
without being Deutsche.
For myself, I will have no
problem in being both a Deutschländer and a Deutscher, despite my background.
It was almost
midnight when he stopped. He now had almost four sheets that made up a
hundred-line article. What should he do with it?
Knowing that he would need to
get up by seven in order to make his ten oclock BEA flight from Heathrow, he decided
to forgo thinking about it and go to sleep.
The next day, after the bus
from Hamburg Airport dropped him at the Hauptbahnhof, he went to the nearest
public telephone booth and called Heinrich Braune. This time Braune had no
trouble remembering who Michael Wilner was, and when Miki told him what he had
for him and what it was about, Braune said, Wait for me. Ill go get it
myself.
Three mornings later Miki,
who by then had been most happily reunited with Brigitte despite occasional
intrusions of Helens lovely face into his mind, went out, with Brigitte still
asleep, to the railway station. There, at the newsstand, he bought a copy of
that days MoPo. He brought it home and placed it on the breakfast
table, open to the feuilleton page, so that Brigitte, once she got up, could
find an essay titled German, West German, Germanian by Michael Wilner,
identified as a doctoral candidate at Göttingen.
* * *
Brigitte did not come home for lunch, so that he ate alone
while rereading what he had written to date. After lunch he went back to the
piano.
She came home about three in
the afternoon. The first thing that she said to him after giving him the chaste
kiss that was typical of her menstrual times was, Well, did you get your trip
confirmed?
Yes and no, he said.
Billung got the flights for me, but then he called back to tell me that Im
not allowed to travel abroad. Im involved in some sort of police
investigation.
What have you done? she
asked with a laugh.
I wish I knew. Its complicated:
BGS told Lufthansa to block my flight, but BGS says that its on orders of the
Hamburg police, and theyre supposed to call me. I have no unpaid traffic
tickets that I know of, and I have not killed anyone that I know of.
Something in between,
perhaps? She laughed again. Perhaps they just need you as a witness.
Perhaps, he said.
Anyway, she said, if you
arent going to Israel this Sunday then I had better change my plans.
What plans had you made?
Just getting together with
some actress friends. But if you arent going then Id rather be with you.
I dont know whats
happening with me, he said, and burst out laughing. You know how I get when
Im in a situation of uncertainty. And this is worse than uncertainty its
complete ignorance! If at least Id been given a hint
That might have made it
worse, Brigitte said. It might have stimulated your imagination in some weird
direction. She suddenly smiled. Not that I mind your weird imagination when
its directed at me
Sometimes I can make it go
in your direction, Miki said, smiling in response, but I dont think this is
one of those times.
Poor Miki. Too bad Im not
in a condition to help you relieve your anxiety in my way.
Too bad indeed, Miki thought.
He knew of women Margot, for example, according to what Helmut had told him
whose readiness for sex was not only not impaired but even enhanced during
their periods, while Brigittes sexuality would be, as it were, turned off. He
consoled himself, as always, by remembering that when it was turned on, which
was about five-sixths of the time, there was probably no woman who could match
her in that regard.
Im tired, Brigitte said.
Miki was not surprised. The second day of her period was usually when her
energy was lowest, and she had probably spent much of what she had left at the
rehearsal, or script conference, or costume fitting, or whatever it was that
she had done at the studio. Im going to take a nap, she went on. Would you
like to join me?
No, thanks, he said. Dont
you remember? Im waiting for a call from the police.
Oh, yes, she said with a
yawn. Then Ill nap in my room. She immediately yawned again and, after
giving Miki another kiss like the initial one, went upstairs.
* * *
For the third consecutive year the young Wilners began
life in a different city. And for Miki it might as well have been a new city.
The two years that he had spent in Göttingen before his marriage, when he was
living in a rooming house, eating in the Mensa and spending much of his free
time in Hanover or Bad Harzburg, were quite unlike his new life there, living
with his wife in an apartment, acting as the principal housekeeper and cook for
their family of two, and preparing for the final oral masters examinations,
his doctoral dissertation, and his career as a free-lance journalist. His
earlier experience in Göttingen came to be a mental map, which he used to
explore the city as he was now coming to know it.
His first article earned not
only a check for 50 marks, but also a great many letters to the editor, mostly
positive. He agreed with Braunes suggestion that he hone his journalistic
skills by writing in a regional paper like the MoPo before attempting a
wide-circulation periodical such as Die Zeit. Braune also wrote him that
any future articles should be sent to an assistant editor named Margot
Klohse-Wallmann, who had told Braune that she remembered Michael Wilner from
their Göttingen days.
So Margot had moved to
Hamburg with Klohse, and now they were married! Which came first, Miki
wondered, the move or the marriage?
In October, in conjunction
with the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade was
awarded to Karl Jaspers. His acceptance speech, titled Truth, Freedom and
Peace, and the speech in his praise by Hannah Arendt had many ideas that
Miki found inspiring. Jaspers book on Schelling had been crucial to his study,
though he did not always agree with the interpretations, and he had recently
read Jaspers The Atom Bomb and the Future of Mankind as well as Hannah
Arendts The Human Condition.
Soon thereafter, he handed to
Witte a single-spaced typed sheet with the draft of what would be the
introduction to his masters thesis.
A century and
a half ago Europe was, just as it is
now, divided into two contending blocs.
In one of them, then as
now, a single despotic power, risen from a betrayed revolution, ruled, under
the guise of liberation, over its satellites.
The other bloc was, then
as now, a heterogeneous coalition actually, a shifting series of coalitions
of states whose constitutions ranged from liberal to tyrannical, united mainly
by its enmity to the other bloc and what it stood for.
And, then as now, the
dividing line passed right through Germany. Then it was the Rhine
Confederation, now it is the German Democratic Republic. Then it was Austria
and Prussia, now it is the German Federal Republic.
Like all analogies, this
one must not be pushed too far. One hundred and fifty years ago the steamship
was in its beginnings, and the railway, the telegraph, the telephone, the
automobile, and the radio all the tools that have made the world of today so
much more compact than the world of then were still in the future.
Consequently, the place of Europe in todays world is far different from what
it was then. It can no longer be viewed in isolation from the rest of the
world, but as an integral part of it, and its division into blocs has its
counterparts elsewhere in the world. The Iron Curtain has faraway offshoots
across Korea and Indochina and may even, if the trend indicated since Castros
takeover of Cuba continues, isolate that island from the rest of America. And
if the one constant in the shifting alliances against Napoleon was a European
power, Great Britain, its anti-Communist counterpart today is the United States
of America.
What is more, if
Napoleons empire-building was, at first, not restricted to Europe witness
the campaigns in Egypt and the Levant
he quickly learned to limit the territorial extent of his ambitions, selling Louisiana
to the United States and voluntarily abandoning Haiti.
But if the spotlight is to
be on Germany, then it is sufficient to limit the background to the European
stage, even in the present day. Germany has, mercifully and through no merit of
its own, been freed of the extra-European connections, of a colonial nature,
that are currently the plague of other European states. And so it seems safe to
continue with a then-and-now consideration of history.
For then, as now, European
minds, and especially German ones, have grappled with the concept of human
freedom.
It is my aim, in this
thesis, to investigate how German minds of the Napoleonic era, and especially
Goethe and Schelling, envisaged human freedom, and to see how their conceptions
are relevant today. I plan to compare them with the ideas of our contemporaries
such as Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt.
I really like
the analogy between the present day and the Napoleonic era, Witte said. There
were those who romanticized Napoleon then, and still do today, just as there
are those who romanticize Stalin.
Yes, even after his death,
Miki remarked.
Thats right, Witte agreed.
So what do you think, Herr
Professor? Miki asked.
I think the idea has a lot
of promise, but it will require a lot of work. You will have to extricate what
Schelling, for example, says about freedom to the extent that it can be
interpreted as political freedom, which is what I suppose you have in mind
from what he says about God, and nature, and mind.
I think its going to be
fun, Miki said, now that the library is being heated in the winter.
But there is more. You will
need to dig into what Schellings immediate predecessors, for example Kant and
Fichte, had to say about the matter, not to mention his contemporary Hegel.
That goes without saying,
Herr Professor, Miki said. And of course Schopenhauer too.
Yes, taking a wide leap
across the nineteenth century is risky; you could fall and hurt yourself,
Witte said with a laugh.
Oh yes, Miki said. I will
make myself a safety net out of Heine and Nietzsche. Heine as philosopher and
Nietzsche as poet, perhaps.
Witte laughed again. Have
fun, then, he said, and good luck, Herr Wilner!
After they shook hands, Miki
walked out of Wittes office with a strange sense of elation. Somewhere in the
back of his mind an idea was forming. By the time had reached the street, it
had come to the fore.
The eventual introduction to
his thesis would of course have to be drastically expanded. But he could use
the proposed one, less the last three paragraphs, as the first part of a
reflection comparing the cult of Napoleon with that of Stalin.
He sent the finished article
to Margot Klohse-Wallmann, and received, with the acceptance letter, a friendly
and witty note from her.
Shortly thereafter, another
copy of the MoPo, open to the feuilleton page, greeted Brigitte Wilner
at breakfast. It featured an article titled From Napoleon Bonaparte to Josef
Stalin by Michael Wilner.
* * *
Miki spent the rest of the afternoon in his study, listening
through headphones to music from the cassette player that he had there. He knew
from experience that he would have no trouble hearing the ring of the telephone
if he kept the volume low enough. He had recently bought the newly released
cassette of Giesekings recordings of some Beethoven sonatas, including the
Waldstein, and he had not listened to it yet. He had gone to hear Gieseking in
Bad Harzburg, with Helga and Brigitte. Helga did not care for Gieseking as a
Beethoven interpreter she preferred the more muscular playing of Arrau or
Backhaus but Miki remembered being entranced with the sound of Beethoven as
an impressionist. He let himself be entranced once more, half a lifetime later.
By dinnertime there was still
no contact from the Hamburg police. Mikis anxiety was growing visibly, and was
spoiling his appetite for dinner. He barely picked at his food. He also thought
that, had Brigitte been sexually available to him that night, he might be too
nervous to perform, and so it was just as well that she was not.
Do they have both of your
telephone numbers? she asked him after dinner.
Theyre the police! he
exclaimed. Of course they have them.
Then perhaps we can go out,
to a cinema or a jazz club. They could leave a message on your answering
machine.
I dont know if they know
how to use those things, he said. Besides, the man at BGS did not say
telephone; he said contact, so maybe they intend to come to the house.
But he didnt tell you that
you had to stay at home, did he?
No, he admitted, but Im
feeling nervous, and if there is a contact, I want to be here to receive it.
* * *
By the end of the winter semester Michael Wilner was not
only a Magister Artium Univesitatis Regiae Georgiae Augustae, with an
embossed diploma to show, but, with the help of numerous splices from his
masters thesis, about a third of the way through his dissertation.
With Brigitte busy evenings
playing Emilia in Emilia Galotti to sold-out houses and days rehearsing
Rosalind in As You Like It, Miki decided to spend the February break by
writing an article, or a series of articles, on Göttingen as a cultural center
that went beyond its status as a university town, in particular as a center of
theater, film, music and publishing.
His starting premise was
that, as a rule, practically every German city that is a center of culture has
a history, well into modern times, as either a free city or as the seat of a
secular or ecclesiastic prince, and in such a city the major cultural
institutions are usually creations of the state. The exceptions are those where
the citizenry itself creates these institutions, and the only such exception
among the large cities is Leipzig, while, among smaller places, one of the few
exceptions is Göttingen; Freiburg im Breisgau might be another. His goal, as he
explained to Margot in a letter, was to explore what makes such a place, and
Göttingen in particular, special.
Margot replied that she had
discussed Mikis proposal with Braune, who thought that this was a worthy goal indeed,
and that, in order to gather information, Herr Wilner was free to present
himself as a correspondent of the Hamburger Morgenpost. He would be our
man in Göttingen, and if he kept the articles coming at the rate of one or
two a week, he could be named as an intern on the editorial staff, with his
name on the masthead, and a regular if modest salary.
He would begin by
interviewing leading figures in the world of theater and film who had
established operations in Göttingen in recent years, beginning with the most
recent, Hans-Günther Klein, who only a year before had founded the Junges
Theater where Brigitte now worked, and whom he had already met.
He went on to contact the
renowned Heinz Hilpert, the former assistant to Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches
Theater in Berlin, who had brought that famous company to Göttingen and
installed it in the municipal theater. But before Miki had a chance to put any
questions to Hilpert about his thoughts of Göttingen, what he heard was So you
are the husband of Brigitte Wilner! Hilpert further told him that he wanted
her as Gretchen for the Faust and as Katharine for the Taming of the
Shrew that he was planning for the following season. Does she know this?
Miki asked. Of course, Hilpert said. And has she given you a reply? Miki
asked further. No, were still negotiating, Hilpert said
Miki felt some irritation
over Brigittes doing such negotiating with letting him know. Of course, he had
not told her about his negotiations with Braune either, but his journalistic
work was a sideline that did not affect their life together, while a commitment
on her part to another season in Göttingen meant that they would be remaining
there, whether or not he wanted to, and that was something that had not yet
been decided.
His feeling of annoyance
prevented him from conducting the interview as smoothly as he would have liked.
It took some effort to get Hilpert to explain the reasons behind his move from
Berlin to Göttingen. The explanation was quite roundabout, but Miki got a sense
that the problems created by Hilperts Nazi-sympathizing past, despite having
been a disciple of the Jewish Reinhardt, had something to do with his
preference for a city that was not a political or judicial center. He wondered
how he could express this hunch in writing in a way that would not cast
aspersions on the famous director.
When he told Brigitte about
the incident, and his feelings in the matter, she answered coolly that her
professional life was her business, just as was the case for him. I would not
sign a contract without talking it over with you, she assured him, but what
leads up to it is like sausage-making.
The next people to interview
were the film producers Hans Abich and Rolf Thiele, the founders of Filmaufbau.
He spoke with them on successive days, and he got from both of them a similar
reaction to that of Hilpert, about his being Brigittes husband. It was dawning
on him that his wife was already being regarded as a star, if a nascent one, of
a greater magnitude than he had realized.
Abich told him that he was
about to change his career from films to television, and that he and Thiele
were planning to sell Filmaufbau, which might not remain in Göttingen. Film and
television were becoming inextricably intertwined, he said, and it was
difficult to maintain a studio in a city that was not also a broadcasting
center; he himself would be moving to Bremen. But they still had a few projects
on the books, and there was one in particular that might have a good part for
Frau Wilner. Does she know? Miki asked. Oh, yes, Abich said.
Thiele was the only one of
the four who, besides thoughtfully answering all the questions that Miki put to
him, expressed interest in his interviewer, leading Miki to think that Thiele,
who was a screenwriter and director as well as a producer, might be gathering
ideas for a screenplay. He asked Miki about his background, about how he met
Brigitte, and about his studies, finally asking, So when do you think you will
kiss the Goose-Liesel?
Miki told him that he hoped
to have his dissertation done by the end of the summer semester, but that might
extend into the following academic year. But I am getting practice in
kissing, he said. My wife looks like what Liesel would be if she were a
little older.
Youve just given me an idea
for a screenplay! Thiele exclaimed. If I write it, I will give you credit.
But, please, not if Brigitte
is in it. We keep our professional lives separate.
* * *
The evening came and went, with Brigitte reading her
script and Miki his scrapbook. On the radio there was a live broadcast of Otello
from the Salzburg Festival, with Jon Vickers and Mirella Freni. It was a relief
from the relentless fare of Beethoven that almost daily filled the airwaves
during that year, the bicentennial of his birth. Miki, to be sure, had also
been celebrating the bicentennial in his way, playing and listening.
The telephone rang once, but
it was on Brigittes line with its distinctive ring, and it was Helmut, calling
to confirm that six oclock was the time of Saturday evenings dinner. There
was nothing from the police.
Brigitte was tired, as usual
in her current condition, despite her nap. Miki felt tired too, but it was a
nervous kind of fatigue, and thought it pointless to go to bed if he knew that
he would not fall asleep. Brigitte sensed his state, kissed him on the cheek
and went upstairs.
For most of the evening he
had given up on figuring out what the police might want with him, but now,
alone in the living room, he began to speculate again. It had occurred to him,
when Brigitte suggested that he might be wanted as a witness, that it might
have something to do with the murder of the wrong Axel Hemme, but what would
the Hamburg police have to do with that? Unless, of course, they were acting in
some way on behalf of the Baden-Württemberg police.
* * *
In the end Abich had to renege on the film proposal he had
made to Brigitte, since the already engaged male star, the popular Hanns
Lothar, had insisted that the female lead go to his fiancée, Ingrid Andree, who
was already a star in her own right.
But Thiele, who had all along
pursued a career as a free-lance screenwriter and director independently of
Filmaufbau, would continue to do so, and he had quickly written a screenplay
for a low-budget feature to be titled Goose-Liesel. It would be three
tales of Göttingen students, taking place at twenty-five-year intervals 1908,
1933 and 1958 with each of them fantasizing about kissing the bronze statue
as a celebration of passing his doctoral examination, and in each one, Brigitte
would be the goose girl come to life.
Preproduction, including
costume fittings for Brigitte, was to start late in the spring, once she had
finished her last role at the Junges Theater: Joan of Arc in Shaws Saint
Joan. The shooting would take place during the summer and early autumn.
While Thiele would be the producer, thus assuring financing and distribution,
he would not direct the film himself, but let it be directed by an assistant,
Horst Schmiede, in his first directing job. Thiele had a number of other
projects, in particular with Nadja Tiller, whose favorite director he was.
Their successful partnership, going back several years, was cemented the
preceding March by the Golden Globe that Thiele won for The Girl Rosemarie,
in which Nadja Tiller played the title character, the recently murdered
real-life prostitute Rosemarie Nitribitt. Their current project, Labyrinth,
was also expected to win awards.
Postproduction would take
place in late autumn and winter, and the premiere, probably in Hamburg, would
be in March or April of 1960.
Once the details were clear,
Brigitte readily and unapologetically communicated them to Miki, along with
telling him quite casually that she had been experiencing headaches while
reading the densely typed screenplay, and discovered that she needed glasses
for reading. She had already had her
eyes examined, and asked him to accompany her to the opticians in order to
help her choose the frame.
Brigittes film contract
meant, of course, staying in Göttingen at least until the beginning of the
following year, but this, by now, seemed like the natural course.
He already knew that he would not complete
his dissertation by the end of the summer semester, that is, by September. He
was writing essay-type articles for the MoPo on a regular basis, and, in
comparison, the dissertation work the long hours of taking notes in the
University Library, the seemingly endless cutting and pasting of typed pages,
the continual renumbering of endnotes felt like drudgery, not like the fun
that it had seemed at first. He felt thankful that Witte, as he had made clear
to him at the outset, did not expect a lengthy opus, only a meaningful one. It
so happened that Miki had found a valuable source of ideas on the relation
between freedom and culture in the book Of Human Freedom by the American
historian Jacques Barzun. Witte, it turned out, knew Barzun; he had met him at
a scholarly conference in New York, and had learned from him the adage that a
dissertation should be an indication of the students ability to pursue his
lifes work, but it should not be his lifes work.
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