by Marcel Beyer
Once we were standing in a fairly large group in the corridor outside Kaltenburg’s office, all wearing sturdy jackets and boots, ready to go on a field trip with the professor to observe passage migrants in the country around Leipzig. It was still early, but we knew the day would soon be drawing to a close. Casually Ludwig Kaltenburg inquired which goose it was that came in both a white and a dark variety, and as if by chance he glanced in my direction. Anser fabalis or Anser albifrons, or perhaps just Anser anser—I looked at the floor, looked at the roughly plastered, white-painted wall, couldn’t gather my thoughts. Behind the professor somebody shook his head; it was Dr. Matzke, Kaltenburg’s assistant, who came to my assistance by silently mouthing the words until I recognized them: “snow goose.”
“All right, then,” drawled the professor. “Let’s go.”
We trotted down the corridor in the cold light, Matzke leading. I always suspected that he saw through the act Kaltenburg put on for his Leipzig colleagues, and that the professor’s strict manner toward me simply got on Matzke’s nerves.
Dr. Eberhard Matzke was part of the Zoological Institute; nobody could have imagined him anywhere else, he himself least of all, no doubt. This was where he had studied in the thirties, this is where he returned after the war. When they placed a Professor Kaltenburg over him, while he remained plain Dr. Matzke, he took it calmly: for Eberhard Matzke, a Leipziger born and bred, Ludwig Kaltenburg was nothing but a passing phenomenon.
He walked up and down between the microscope tables, slightly bent, helping with a dissection here, moving a slide into the light there. Under his lab coat he wore a cardigan, and in the evenings when he hung up his white coat I always expected to see a few straws sticking to the matted wool. As though Matzke kept animals in a hutch tucked away in a remote corner of the sprawling institute building, animals he had left that morning only because he felt that unless he was peering over our shoulders, we might not go on examining feather structures and sensory cells under the microscope. He went steadily about his duties, that is to say, he spent most of his time at my bench—the Herr Professor must have no reason to complain.
He couldn’t understand why many students made such heavy going of these tasks, instead of dispatching them as fast as possible so they could get back into the much more attractive world of living animals. To spur us on as we worked, Matzke told us anecdotes about his encounters with animals, which he was convinced would open up vistas in our mind’s eye while in reality we were still struggling with a paper-thin slice of dead tissue. How he had once rescued a golden eagle injured in a fight, how a favorite crow went missing and how he fished it out weeks later from a sedimentation tank—he repeated many of these stories every six months or so, but we enjoyed them all the same because Matzke’s slight Saxon singsong and his warm, deep voice soothed us.
“My colleague Matzke should have a medal just for his ability to keep a crowd of students quiet,” opined Kaltenburg. We never found out what he thought of him as a zoologist. Possibly the professor would not have believed his “colleague Matzke”—merely an assistant to Kaltenburg—capable of filling a university chair of his own. But he did at least deserve a decoration: “Even if I have to pin it on him myself.”
Now and again Martin was allowed to go to Leipzig too: “Just don’t go holding the lad back from serious study,” warned Kaltenburg, and, half in jest, “Just to make sure, I’ll get my colleague Matzke to keep an eye on you.” But I was aware that the warning was aimed not at Martin but at me; I was supposed to follow Martin’s example in paying keen attention to Matzke’s words.
When Martin accompanied me to a laboratory session and Matzke interrupted his story with a long-drawn-out “Aha,” I knew that he had got as far as the glass case at the back. That was where Martin liked to sit, concentrating on the display-specimen martens and rabbits that languished there practically ignored. It was a sight I wouldn’t have wanted to miss: the huge, heavy man looming over Martin, and the wiry figure on its folding stool almost disappearing behind a massive back. There was just a glimpse of the corner of the sketch pad, Matzke with arms outspread as though about to devour the stranger, you could visualize his wide-open mouth—but Martin showed no fear, and what came out was only another “Aha.”
He was sketching animals, afraid perhaps that if he departed too far from his models in place of Matzke’s friendly “Aha,” he would get an unhappy shake of the head. At home he had been working for a long time with animal blood, with fat, with tea stains on packing paper, creating beings that few would have recognized at first sight as animals. But Martin himself shook his head when he surveyed his work, he trusted neither what he saw on paper before him nor the figures that had gradually begun to populate the world of his imagination.
I admit we didn’t take Dr. Matzke entirely seriously, just as he probably didn’t take us entirely seriously either. The heavy, loping gait, the cardigan that had long since lost its shape—and then suddenly, from one day to the next, there was no longer any Dr. Matzke at the Zoological Institute to supervise our small-bird dissections, giving himself a shock when he boomed, “It’s a matter of principle here,” whereupon he always fell into a half-whispered tone that was meant to be enticing: “And anyway, working like this you’ll get to know the bird from the inside out, it’s showing itself to you as you’d never see it otherwise.”
Matzke turned his back on Leipzig. He had received an offer from Berlin that he couldn’t refuse, especially since it held the prospect of a professorial title. At last he would become “colleague Matzke,” and a colleague of the famous Reinhold to boot. It was in fact Reinhold who had conveyed the news to us on a visit to Loschwitz. Kaltenburg didn’t comment on Matzke’s move, he played it down when people said he must surely have pulled strings to advance Dr. Matzke’s career when it seemed to be over. And when I asked him once whether the man hadn’t always been a bit in the way, he just smiled.
3
EBERHARD MATZKE REMOVED his cardigan. Gave his hair a side parting. Took over Kaltenburg’s former doctoral student, Fräulein Holsterbach. Soon relinquished his Saxon singsong, adopted a clear, almost hard High German, and every time he dictated an article, he asked his assistant to make sure no regional expressions slipped in. By degrees, in his new surroundings Eberhard Matzke even shed the awkwardness that had easily identified him in Leipzig when you were hurrying toward the institute entrance in the morning and saw a distant figure dismounting from his bicycle in the early light. The wider his sphere of influence spread, the slimmer and nimbler he appeared, as though he had learned at every step to avoid an obstacle, even if the obstacle was invisible.
“He’s doing well. The Natural History Museum is good for him, the university is good for him.” Kaltenburg lauded him when asked about the new man in Berlin. “I’m very pleased that colleague Matzke has found his feet.”
The professor had not the faintest idea what was happening under his nose. Perhaps he seriously thought that Matzke would be eternally grateful to him. But in the light of subsequent events, the impression given by Matzke’s publications in the second half of the fifties is that he was truly out to demolish Kaltenburg by holding up one theory after another to cast doubt on it, to nullify it. Not that he mounted a frontal assault on the professor, that he never did, but it seems to me that he wasn’t fully satisfied with any scientific paper he wrote, any ornithological field observation, even a newspaper article, unless it contained, if only tucked away in a subordinate clause somewhere, a covert little dig at Ludwig Kaltenburg’s convictions.
One remark of his instantly made me so angry that I didn’t dare show it to the professor. He could not possibly have seen it as anything other than deliberately offensive, an egregiously arrogant departure from the tone of what was otherwise a factual account, attesting to years of zoological research, concerning conflict arising under conditions of imprisonment. I had seen an offprint of the article lying on Kaltenburg’s desk and noticed the inscription, “With collegial g
reetings,” in Eberhard Matzke’s handwriting, which grew larger from year to year. It’s surely no accident that I have such a clear memory of this little excursus—which I couldn’t help hoping Kaltenburg had overlooked—for one thing because the author was dealing with the inhibition against biting among wolves, and for another because the offensive remarks touched upon one of Kaltenburg’s most sacrosanct principles, frequently expressed to me: “To live is to observe.”
Matzke declared it was pure nonsense to maintain, as people had done right up to the present, that in a fight between wolves the weaker will openly expose its throat to the stronger in a gesture that inhibits the latter from biting it. He wrote that he did not know what original observation underpinned this assertion, but by now it had almost attained the status of an article of faith among experts, and in a strange turn of phrase he went on to say that from his own wide experience, at least, the inhibition against biting among canines was just wishful thinking on the part of gullible, peace-loving zoologists. At any rate, word had not yet got around among the parties concerned, he concluded smugly, exposing one of Kaltenburg’s most cherished maxims to ridicule. I remember how my temples throbbed as I thought, I hope the professor did no more than skim through the essay this morning, I hope the ducks distracted him from reading it, that while feeding the drakes he overlooked the tone of his “colleague Matzke” and the effrontery of his pronouncements.
A committee was restructured—Matzke took over the chair, although Kaltenburg had done much preliminary spadework behind the scenes. There was a post to be filled—by Matzke’s candidate. A congress in the Soviet Union—the deputation consisted entirely of Matzke’s people. Kaltenburg shook his head; the man was rather overreaching himself, after having failed for so many years in Leipzig to make any real impact—but we, hearing the disappointing news during the morning meeting, looked at the professor and could see he was thinking of Leningrad.
Somebody once claimed to have heard that Ludwig Kaltenburg stomped up and down behind his closed study door shouting repeatedly, “The Party, the Party.” To this day I regard this as an invention, some assistant wanting to impress his colleagues, and in any case everybody knew that Eberhard Matzke was not a member of the Party. No, on the contrary, Kaltenburg took every opportunity to warn against jumping to conclusions, took on the role of self-assured intermediary. When the first German students of zoology graduated in the Soviet Union, everyone was afraid that their return would mean our subject would soon be dominated by Party loyalists—but Kaltenburg praised these intrepid young people, stressing the quality of Russian zoology, and “After all, gentlemen, we’re all ornithologists together.”
He was convinced that even Professor Matzke would calm down eventually. Reinhold in Berlin, getting to know his new colleague at close quarters, thought otherwise, but Reinhold, the grand old man, had often been fearful of his successors, especially when they were keen to strike out in new directions. Reinhold’s visits to Dresden became more frequent, he still had relations in his home city, but it looked as though he was visiting his family mainly so that he could also call in at Loschwitz. The phone rang. “Ah, my dear Professor”—Kaltenburg looked across at me—“it goes without saying that you’re welcome at any time”; Kaltenburg was making sure he showed the proper respect that, according to Reinhold, was lacking in Matzke; “I’ll send my driver,” Kaltenburg was nodding in the semidarkness next to the hall stand, yes, Krause still knew the address.
He tried to cheer Reinhold up, to take his mind off things. One day, as the limousine drew up outside the villa, he told Krause to keep the engine running, greeted Reinhold through the open passenger window, pushed me onto the rear seat, and followed me in: “We’re going to Strehlen.”
The professor made Krause stop at Tiergartenstrasse, he invited us to take a little stroll through the Great Garden, for one thing ideas came most easily when you were walking, he said, and for another I knew that he didn’t want anyone overhearing his discussion with Reinhold. They must find an additional sphere of activity for “the young man”—Matzke was all of seven years younger than Kaltenburg. No, not a posting abroad, far away where you couldn’t keep an eye on him, but a newly created framework that would satisfy his desire to be the first to break new ground for once in his life. Naturally, it must be a framework within which Eberhard Matzke was kept under careful control. A great undertaking, with a great new title to match for the Herr Professor Doktor—and all, be it noted, under the constant supervision of a worldly-wise international expert, a legendary figure among ornithologists: Reinhold himself.
We walked around Lake Carola, in less than twenty minutes a plan had been hatched, and we went back to the road. The chauffeur got out of the car, held the door open, but Kaltenburg signaled to him that we were going to walk on a bit further, pointing in the direction of the embankment.
“No need to worry. I’ll explore the mood among the colleagues, take soundings in the Academy of Sciences and find out what can be done there. You’ll see, everybody will support you.”
And now it comes back to me clearly, it was the year of Hungary, we had reached the Wasaplatz, I can see the black limousine, Krause driving along beside us at a walking pace as we turned into August Bebel Strasse. Reinhold waving his stick, Kaltenburg gesticulating wildly, as soon as we had set off downhill from the Institute the two had started a debate on the history of ornithology. By now they were on to Georg Marcgraf and Carl Illiger, dropping names like Bernstein, Kuhl, and Boie, not one of them survived into old age, consumption, tropical fever, my eyes were fixed on the barrack gates at the other end of the street. Every step we took was being watched from there, we were moving around the edge of the military security zone, I wouldn’t like to know what went on behind those walls at that time, nor what measures might have been taken if Ludwig Kaltenburg had not stopped suddenly and pointed to one of the fairly unremarkable villas: “This is where he grew up.”
We were standing in front of the house where Reinhold spent his childhood and youth. I think he was genuinely quite moved, Reinhold in his loose linen suit under a light coat, up there in that attic room was where he had spent his afternoons with grass snakes and lizards he had caught, here in a large enclosure alongside the stable was where the cross-bred offspring of goldfinches and redpolls had first seen the light of day. And as a boy he too used to observe the crows on the Wasaplatz. Ludwig Kaltenburg’s surprise for him had succeeded completely. But for my part I was taken right back to the days of our excursions, how long ago was that, all that “induction by personal inspection,” only a few years, I was still a boy, collecting signatures for world peace, didn’t even know that one day I would be working with Kaltenburg at the Institute, wasn’t even sure I wanted to stay in Dresden, didn’t even know Klara Hagemann yet, while she was living only a few hundred meters from this spot.
4
IN JUNE 1956 a truck drove through Dresden carrying prisoners liberated from the camps. People crowded the pavements, law enforcement officers kept the road clear. In order to give as many townspeople as possible the chance to study these figures, the open truck transported its cargo at walking pace through the city along the following route: from Dr. Kurt Fischer Platz down the Königsbrücker Strasse to the Platz der Einheit. From Bautzner Strasse into Hoyerswerdaer Strasse. Across the Einheitsbrücke to Güntzplatz. From Güntzstrasse, a right turn into Grunaer Strasse. The truck followed Thälmannstrasse as far as the Postplatz, the procession ending at the Theaterplatz.
“I’m sure you noticed it too?” Klara inquired.
“Yes, dreadful.” Professor Kaltenburg looked away into the distance.
It had rained a lot throughout the summer, overcast days, muddy holes all over the city. In the gray light the skin of the prisoners looked duller than ever, though they were very young, just a few of them seemed older. Beneath this dirty sky, however, that may have been a false impression, the hollow eyes, the pinched cheeks, their poor teeth. No, they must simply have been ex
hausted.
Kaltenburg listened again to Klara’s description of the prisoners’ truck. The inmates’ shirts and trousers, the way they hung loosely from their meager frames. Gray and white stripes. No, no trouser creases. Yes, rough linen. The moment when the driver braked because he got too close to the group in front: the way the prisoners lurched, holding on to each other, for a second you thought they were all going to lose their balance.
“What an awful sight,” said Kaltenburg.
Because you weren’t sure whether what you were seeing in their eyes was the shock of performers or the fear of camp inmates.
A father pointed with his furled umbrella to a spot far ahead at the crossroads, explaining something to the daughter who was sitting on his shoulders. A family festival. The onlookers waved and called out. A column of trekking refugees came along, with handcarts and baby carriages. At the beginning you could wave to the Saxon nobility, Augustus the Strong under a canopy. The shy young ladies-in-waiting grouped around a model of the Church of Our Lady waving back with their handkerchiefs, the magnificent clothes, the wigs, the powder and lipstick. Hour after hour the postwar rubble-clearing women, flag wavers, apprentice gardeners, fanfares, airplane builders, filed past. By this time you had nearly forgotten the steam locomotive, the horse-drawn tram, and the historic milk cart, along with the float bearing the inscription ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS, its crew sitting on their bench looking out searchingly from under their steel helmets. Still to come were a combine harvester, the Wartburg vehicle fleet, a car from the animated film studios surmounted by Pittiplatsch, the cartoon figure. One of the last displays of this parade to celebrate the 750th anniversary of Dresden was a huge model of the new brand of cigarette, Jubilar, carried right across the city on the bare legs of six girls.