Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Our cars were shunted several times back and forth across the Marien Bridge. The Canaletto panorama with the Hofkirche and the Brühlsche Terrace 171was the last thing I wanted to see at that point.

Naturally I would have preferred an escort of uniformed men, plus a phalanx of plainclothes men barricading me as I climbed aboard a train for West Berlin — where, surrounded by photographers and cameramen, I would then begin my new life. But that triumph presumed that here and now I had to fall in, buzz cut and all. Before I could display my treasures, I would have to enter the underworld and have a look around.

When we finally pulled out and passed through Radebeul — my mother and father had wandered those vineyards together, and later Vera and I, and once Geronimo and I, had strolled there too — I was for a few moments the dissident writer who was being exiled by his government, who would never be allowed to return to his hometown, who would be consoled by a speech given in his honor by Heinrich Böll 172or Willy Brandt. I gazed from the window and formulated the first sentences of my acceptance speech, an indictment that would leave no comrade unaware of what a huge mistake it had been to banish me.

Now began a veritably endless circuitous trip. A farm boy from Upper Lusatia treated our compartment to home-butchered sausage, because he was afraid — thanks to some remark by a noncom — that he would soon be relieved of his provisions. He himself ate liverwurst, neat. He became a hero when he pulled underwear out of his bag and peeled it away to reveal a bottle of high-proof whiskey.

My new comrades made fun of the Brandenburg landscape, which had always been my Arcadia, called it a sand and pine desert. In late afternoon we arrived — sober and a little more familiar with one another — in Oranienburg, which lies to the north of what was then West Berlin.

On the way from the train station to our barracks I was annoyed that no one turned around to watch us pass.

As if on command, a hundred feet suddenly kicked at piles of leaves by the side of the road, scuffled around in them, sent leaves spiraling and drifting ahead, scooped them against the heels of the man in front, over the shoes of the man beside, scattered them in all directions. No command, no barked order told us to stop. The rebellion didn’t end until there were no more piles of leaves. The yowls of those with six and more months already behind them were silly by comparison. They flung windows open and roared the number of days they still had left, as if in this country service in the army could ever come to an end, as if they didn’t know that at any moment they could always be stuck in a uniform again and imprisoned in a barrack. With a boom the gate slammed shut behind us…

At the rear of the base, between a frame structure and the House of Culture, you could see the building that marked what had once been the entrance to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

I later wrote a long passage about how we stood there with our bags in the drizzle while we watched one company after another march into the mess hall for supper, about how we were vaccinated, made to fill out questionnaires and to wait until we were soaked to the skin. It was almost nine o’clock, an hour before lights out, before I was sent along with some others to a building that abutted the camp watchtower.

Although we had to stand for another hour in the entry as if at a pillory, the sparkling clean red floors and freshly painted walls had a calming effect on me. I wanted to get out of my wet clothes and, yes, I was looking forward to a dry uniform! The room assigned me came equipped with just two bunk beds — but looked comfortable. Pasted on the top bunk on the right was a slip of paper with the typewritten words: Private Türmer.

My only fear was that I wouldn’t be able to make a mental note of everything I saw, heard, and smelled. I couldn’t let any of it be lost.

At the sound of the wake-up whistle the next morning I jumped out of bed as if about to leave on an expedition. Morning gymnastics and breakfast were canceled for us late arrivals. Instead they threw at our feet a piece of canvas that could be buttoned up into a sack. With it in hand we shuffled through supply rooms. A steel helmet, a new and an old pair of boots, three uniforms (standard, dress, field), protective gear, gas mask, gym shoes, tracksuit — I accepted it all like a miner being outfitted. I was going down into the pit to uncover hidden treasures.

At the midday meal, as I was hungrily wolfing down my Königsberger meatballs, a big stocky fellow farther down the long table stood up and shouted that the only reason he could stomach this slop was that this was the first food he’d been fed here. Tomorrow he was going to dump this slop over the head of the sergeant at the end of the table.

I pressed my last bit of potato into the gravy — and was thrilled. My first character had just revealed himself to me, a combination of Thersites and Ajax. 173I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight.

That afternoon as we were packing up our own stuff, I inserted among the damp clothes a greeting to my mother and an envelope addressed to Geronimo. Inside it were three pages of jotted notes, with a 1 at the top, then a slash, followed by a page number. I asked him to collect and save these rough sketches. I started on 2 immediately afterward.

My mother still talks today about the moment when she opened the package and found my clothes inside—“as if you had died.”

Enough for today. As always warmest greetings from

Your Enrico T.

Friday, April 20, ’90

Verotchka, 174

So that we don’t waste our telephone time: Roland was here. He’s on a lecture tour of the East. The Party of Democratic Socialism is allowing him to appear only in small towns. But what he loves to talk about most is you, as if you had left for the West because of him.

If I understood Roland correctly, he’s soon going to have to look around for a new job. Not even universities have any use for his theories now. He of course put it differently: just when for the very first time we’re going to need to give serious thought to socialism/communism, they’re going to terminate his position. I asked him who he meant by we. The oppressed and disenfranchised, people dying of hunger and thirst, people who’ve been driven from their homes, who’ve been raped and have no roof over their heads, he replied without a hint of irony.

Then he laid into the New Forum for having acted so irresponsibly, for being so naive and childish, as if they had never heard of capitalism. And now we can sit back and watch it all get smashed, everything that distinguished it “over against capitalism.”

It’s pointless to argue with him, I knew that beforehand. He has a knack for constantly maneuvering you into corners where you start justifying yourself all on your own. For him I was somebody from the New Forum, which, whether it intended to or not, had sold out the GDR to capitalists.

He wasn’t interested in our paper. At least there used to be nothing in our newspapers, he said; nowadays they’re just full of nonsense. In the very next sentence he claimed I wouldn’t publish anything about his lecture—“presumably for reasons of space.” When I asked him why he would accuse me of that, he mocked me, saying he could see my article already before him. I was speechless. And Roland’s reaction: he’d always admired reactionaries, the way they fall silent the moment something doesn’t suit them, they trust in the way things are, in the power of factuality, so why argue? I asked him whether he now regarded me as a reactionary. He laughed — I’d always been one! Unlike the people from the Party of Democratic Socialism, he has no guilty feelings and sees himself as totally above it all. That’s what annoyed me most.