Ingo Schulze - New Lives

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89. At the start of the second part of the letter it was still evening. Either T. had slept in the meantime or — though it is hardly likely — it had taken him all night to write it.

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90. Refers to a phone call that evidently came earlier than had been agreed on. T.’s letters to V. T. never made it to Beirut. Thus the only ones that still exist are those that T. made a carbon copy of, plus two faxed letters.

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91. Cf. footnote 2, The Letters of Enrico Türmer.

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92. He means the “ice crystals” of the shattered windshield.

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93. This surely must either be a wish or a fond hope. It is quite unclear what T. meant by this. There is no record of anything by N. H. ever being published in the Altenburg Weekly.

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94. T. had already noted in his letter to N. H. that the neck support had been removed.

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95. T. and N. H. knew each other for only a few hours, and those were full of misunderstandings and accidents. The fact that N. H. came from the Federal Republic of Germany must have played a major role in T.’s attraction to her. T. is explaining and justifying himself for a Western audience here, a quite typical stance in East Germany at the time.

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96. These words remind one more of the opening of a novel than of a letter. It remains unclear for whom this “painful story” is intended, for whom it is supposed to serve as a “cautionary tale.”

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97. An oilclothlike material that could be wiped off.

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98. T. doesn’t explain who lies concealed behind this we.

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99. It was quite common for people to give their cars names. One explanation might be that you drove, or better, had to drive, “your car” for ten years or more.

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100. Approximately one thousand very valuable volumes were removed from the Altenburg Council Library under the pretext of their needing repair, but were then sold in the West under the aegis of Schalck-Golodkowski’s Commercial Coordination.

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101. There were a good number of cases in which school principals were either demoted or fired.

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102. Presumably broken off because Barrista had appeared.

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103. The heroine in Rusalka had broken her leg. She continued to sing, but Michaela Fürst had to stand in for her onstage for several performances.

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104. The talking car from the TV series Knight Rider was named KITT.

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105. No literary work by Johann Ziehlke has been found among T.’s papers.

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106. More details of the argument between N. H. and Barrista can be found in later letters to N. H.

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107. The Alliance 90 (New Forum, Democracy Now, Initiative for Peace and Human Rights) received only 2.9 percent of the votes. That put the Citizens’ Movement out of the running for good. The Alliance for Germany (Christian Democratic Union, German Social Union, and Democratic Awakening) received 48 percent, the CDU taking 40.6 percent of that; German Socialist Party, 21.8 percent; Party of Democratic Socialism, 16.3 percent. Voter participation was 93 percent.

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108. For self-employed people like Piatkowski a position with the LPDP (German Liberal Democratic Party) would have offered a more likely “refuge” than the CDU.

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109. Nicoletta had sent T. some newspaper articles about Clemens von Barrista and marked up several paragraphs.

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110. Of course the correct verb at this point ought to be “read,” not “hear.”

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111. In Intershop stores Western goods could be purchased with foreign currency. The potpourri of odors from soap, detergent, coffee, chocolate, perfume, etc., created a special fragrance that no longer exists, but that at the time pervaded the immediate vicinity of these stores and was perceived by many as a promise of the “Golden West.” At no point, however, does Türmer consider the moral and social implications of such Intershop stores for the populace of the GDR.

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112. The painter Gerhard Ströch, born 1926 in Rödichen-Schnepfenthal, lived in Altenburg and in 1956 adopted the name Altenbourg; he died on Dec. 29, 1989, in a car accident near Meissen.

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113. A tar-processing factory in Rositz.

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114. In 1806, at the battle of Jena and Auerstadt, Napoleon’s troops defeated the armies of Prussia and Saxony. At Jena the French forces were larger, whereas at Auerstadt — to which Barrista was obviously referring — they were only about half as strong as those of their foes.

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115. According to information provided by V. T., the children first heard Frau Nádori use the word “Mamus” for Mother/Mama, which they then adopted.

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116. This sort of barter was customary inasmuch as citizens of the GDR could exchange their marks for only a limited number of forints.

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117. Since the family had previously always taken this trip during spring break, T.’s last trip to Budapest had occurred before his “Awakening.”

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118. Ibrahim Böhme, the chairman of the East’s sister party to the West German SPD. Both he and, prior to him, the lawyer Wolfgang Schnur, one of the cofounders of “Democratic Awakening,” which then later became part of the CDU, had been denounced as spies of the former State Security.

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119. T. is perhaps too hasty here in insinuating a suspicion.

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120. It is difficult to recapture the provocation that T.’s election editorial is said to have represented in March 1990. T. concluded his hardly original commentary: “Certainly more important than the results is the fact that it was possible to hold an election at all.”

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121. The “illustrated volume” in question is Robert Oertel, Frühe italienische Malerei in Altenburg [Early Italian Painting in Altenburg] (Berlin, 1961). “The two centuries whose course we can survey in the Altenburg Collection were decisive not only for the future of Italian art, but also for the artistic spirit of Europe itself,” p. 50.

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122. At the time, twelve hundred D-marks were worth approximately three to four thousand East-marks. A comparable profit would have required an increase in sales of at least four if not five thousand additional copies.

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123. He is referring to the vespers sung by the choir of the Dresden Kreuzkirche.

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124. This is a misleading statement, since one of T.’s manuscript pages contained barely half the number of words found on a standard typed page.

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125. A consolidated high school (with grades nine to twelve) whose pupils also included the boys and young men of the Kreuzkirche choir (so-called Kreuzianer ).

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126. The setting for the stories and novels of Hermann Hesse, who in 1892 fled from Maulbronn after only seven months there.

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127. Incorrectly quoted. “To the honor of God, in memory of its founders, and for the benefit and profit of the young.”

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128. The town in the Swiss canton of Tessin where Hesse lived from 1919 until his death in 1962.

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129. The nickname given Johann Ziehlke, although it is not quite clear just why. Apparently in the sense of “the last honest man standing.” The historical Geronimo (1829–1909) was the chief of the Chiricahua Apaches, who did not surrender until 1886, i.e., very late.