Ingo Schulze - New Lives

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185. Barrista’s entourage evidently had considerable practice at scenes like this.

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186. Monetary union with the Federal Republic was scheduled to begin July 1, 1990.

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187. T. initially gave the sum as twelve hundred, cf. his letter of March 28, 1990.

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188. T. was now in the second six months of his eighteen-month service.

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189. This is a surprising statement inasmuch as at the end of his previous letter to N. H., T. had claimed that he was “not going to tolerate” Nikolai in his presence anymore.

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190. Understandably enough, T. wanted to conceal his homoerotic relationship with Nikolai, but was also evidently unable to do without Nikolai in his cast of characters.

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191. Forty-eight-hour sentry duty.

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192. T. knew whereof he spoke. His letters to Nicoletta read like a settlement of accounts with a life made up of “intentionally arranged incidents.” At the same time the question necessarily arises as to whether his letters to Nicoletta are not also “an intentionally arranged incident.”

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193. Corporal stripes are incomprehensible as a reason.

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194. V. T. and Johann Ziehlke are in agreement that in the first few days after their discharge, T. and Nikolai were a couple.

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195. T. feared any and all competition in this regard as well.

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196. T. leaves unmentioned the fact that he knew the person in question from his school-days: to wit, the publisher of these letters. I would have loved to know T.’s opinion of my texts, but he never again refers to them here.

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197. The Army District Command was where one’s identification papers were returned, after having been held there for the duration of one’s military service.

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198. The edition he means was probably that of the Verlag Kultur und Fortschritt [Culture and Progress Publishers] (Berlin, 1964), on the cover of which is a saber-brandishing, mustachioed cavalryman.

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199. Matthias Domaschk of Jena was arrested on April 10, 1981, and the following morning was handed over to the district office of the Ministry for State Security in Gera. On April 12th, Matthias Domaschk died in the ministry’s pretrial detention facility in Gera under circumstances still unexplained today. The Ministry for State Security reported that he had hanged himself with his own shirt.

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200. An elegant new spelling. One presumes it was also meant to invoke echoes of Beethoven.

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201. A note paper-clipped to this carbon copy contains the following quoted observation: “What one perceives in the presence of one’s beloved is only a negative that must first be developed when one returns home and can use the darkroom of one’s own interior, the entrance to which is ‘nailed shut’ as long as one can see the other person.” Thus far no source for this quote has been determined.

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202. The five weeks of reserve training were graded as if they were regular coursework. Anyone who did not “pass” was dismissed from the university.

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203. A description of the enemy on the basis of certain predetermined criteria.

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204. Officers were usually not from one’s own university or technical school.

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205. The firm was a synonym for the State Security.

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206. The analogy between the situation described here and that in which T. now found himself as a letter writer is certainly self-evident. Both women “fit in with all the rest” and into his “calculation” as well.

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207. As a rule each student received two hundred marks per month, with which one could just eke out an existence without assistance from home or taking a part-time job.

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208. “I still recall that ‘Maria Theresia’ meant Bratislava and ‘go to work’ meant Brno, but I’ve forgotten how the mistake happened and whether it was Enrico’s or my fault.”—Sabine Kraft in a letter to the editor.

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209. Power plants in the “three-country triangle” of the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland had badly damaged the flora and fauna of these low mountains.

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210. Beer.

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211. Apparently an allusion by T. to an imaginary quasi-incestuous relationship with V. T. This fantasy later takes on outright delusional dimensions.

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212. What lay behind this offer was the outcome of local elections held on May 6, 1990. Johann had campaigned as a candidate of Alliance 90, but had failed to be elected to the city council.

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213. He means that the page count can be increased or decreased in increments of four.

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214. On March 29th, the executive board of the German Bundesbank had recommended an exchange rate of 2:1, arguing that the GDR economy could not support a conversion at 1:1. The new head of government in the GDR, de Maizière, was afraid that cutting wages in half would result in “intolerable social tensions,” and advocated a 1:1 rate for salaries and pensions. On July 1st savings up to four thousand marks (and up to six thousand marks for citizens over sixty) were to be exchanged at 1:1, anything beyond that at 2:1. Since the exchange rate at the end of January had been 5:1 or even higher, T. is engaging in one of his typical speculations.

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215. For the local elections of May 6, 1990.

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216. T. surely knows more than he admits here, cf. his article in the Altenburg Weekly, no. 13; the most extensive and well-researched study on the history of the Altenburg hand reliquary has been done by Hans Dörpfeldt, published unfortunately in an obscure periodical, Heidelberger Studien zur katholischen Dogmatik [Heidelberg studies on Catholic dogmatics], no. 66, p. 55 ff.; cf. P. Schnabel, Die Heimkehr des Patrons [The patron returns home], in Altenburger Pfade in die Vergangenheit [Altenburg paths into the past], no. 1, p. 7 ff.; suitable as an introduction to the topic, especially for young readers, is Arbeiten und Beten mit Bonifatius [Work and prayer with Boniface] (Altenburg, 2004), 12th edition.

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217. T. apparently had in mind Horace: Works in One Volume , Manfred Simon, ed. and trans. (Berlin, 1972).

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218. A sweet Romanian white wine.

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219. T. was evidently still of this opinion in May 1990.

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220. It is rather unlikely that Roland, who according to V. T. was relatively well informed about conditions in the GDR, would have asked such a question. Perhaps here as well T. is sacrificing truth for the sake of a punch line.

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221. When had he ever previously arrived “at just such a point”?

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222. A standard textbook.

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223. By now at least it should be apparent how preoccupied T. was with questions of composition when writing these letters.

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224. It should be remembered that, as he did with the majority of his letters, T. made a carbon copy of these pages.

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225. The assumption that there was a homoerotic relationship between Johann and T. sheds relatively clear light on this enigmatic situation. The following remark from the copy, rendered illegible in the original, also indicates as much: “Just as with Vera before him, I had no choice but to interpret this as Johann’s payback for my love affair with Nadja.”