Kippenberger
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In Elisabeth Ruge, she found a publisher who welcomed this project with an extraordinary amount of pleasure, enthusiasm, and new ideas. My editor at Berlin Verlag, Matthias Weichelt, could not have been more pleasant: he worked gently and intelligently on the text and patiently welcomed one chapter after another. His calm gave me the feeling, even in the difficult last weeks of the project, that everything would turn out all right.
The editor of my second book, Friederike Schilbach, introduced me to Leanne Shapton—and that is how this American edition came about, thanks to the enthusiasm and courage of Jason Fulford and Leanne Shapton. They threw themselves into the project of bringing this doorstopper of a book to America, something that far bigger publishing houses with much more money wouldn’t tackle. Their relentless commitment is astounding. In Damion Searls they found a sensitive and original translator with a wonderful sense of humor, who was able to hit the right tone and who mastered the challenge of Martin’s very own language. Meticulous as he is, he even proved me wrong sometimes. And Martha Sharpe was as gentle and intelligent an editor as Matthias Weichelt.
I could not have written this book without the generosity and understanding of my colleagues at Tagesspiegel and the encouragement, support, and accommodation of my friends, especially Edmund, Christiane, Lukas, Linus, and Nelly Labonté, Monika and Andreas Bartholomé, Jan Schütte and Christina Szapáry, Nicola Kuhn and Jörg Rüter, Adelheid Scholten and Paul Stoop, Iris and Oliver Merz, Ilse-Maria Bielefeld, Katharina Körner, and all my neighbors.
“There is no such thing as loneliness for a family man,” Martin once said. The cohesion of our family has supported me throughout my life, and it is they above all who helped me with this book: with memories, letters, books, advice, trust, anticipation, curiosity, enthusiasm, and some skepticism when needed, too. My deepest thanks to Sabine Kippenberger-Steil and Andreas, Benjamin, Charlotte and Elena Steil, Bettina, Lars, Lisa and Philipp Herfeldt, Barbara Kippenberger, Petra Kippenberger-Biggemann, Klaus and Jochen Kopp, Moritz Kippenberger, Gabi Hirsch-Könen and Helena Hirsch, Elfie Semotan with Ivo and August Kocherscheidt and everyone with them—including Bruno. Bine happily threw herself into our joint trip back into our childhood and beat the drum for this project, together with Andreas, my very first reader; Tina was always there to urge me back to my desk, along with Babs, who warned me not to get lost in too muchresearch. And it was Babs who, with failing strength, pulled every possible string to retrieve an object that Martin had made for our mother—as a favor to me.
Life goes on, as several people said by way of consolation after Martin’s death. What no one said was that death goes on, too. On the very day that I officially started working on this book, our oldest sister, Babs, learned that she had kidney cancer. On December 17, 2006, the day before I was due to turn in the manuscript, she passed away. She fought like the lioness she was and firmly believed that she would recover. When she was taken to the hospital the day before she died, she was committed to being back home again for Christmas. She had already bought presents. She never complained, and she took pleasure in many things right up to the end: that Andreas went for walks with her when she could hardly walk herself, being wheeled around in a wheelchair, that Philipp, her hero, would pick her up off the ground and lead her to the bath so that she felt like a figure-skating princess. That Bine cheered her up, and Tina and Lars gave her comfort, trust, and a home. Although everyone acknowledged her sharp, quick thinking and absolute professionalism in her work, Babs was not especially happy as a lawyer. Then, a few years ago, when she overcame her Kippenbergerian fear of machines and got herself a computer, she discovered what she really loved to do besides travel: write. Some of her letters and other pieces can be read on her website, www.barbara-kippenberger.de—all written with the dry humor she maintained until right before her death.
Martin once said that he hated the past perfect tense: “To have had that.”
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The publishers would like to thank Friederike Schilbach for introducing us to Susanne Kippenberger and Damion Searls for a sensitive and rigorous translation. Thank you to John Wray, Robin Bellinger, Martha Sharpe, Gisela Capitain, Lisa Franzen, Rebecca Nagel, Lorin Stein, and Luise Stauss. Our deepest thanks to Susanne Kippenberger for trusting J&L with this special book. The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut, which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Susanne Kippenberger lives and works in Berlin where she is an award-winning writer and editor at the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel . She is the author of At the Table , a book about Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher, Elizabeth David, Alice Waters, and today’s culinary bohemians from Brooklyn to Berlin: amateurs and iconoclasts who have changed the way we eat. Susanne is the youngest of Martin Kippenberger’s four sisters.
Damion Searls is a writer and translator of authors including Proust, Rilke, Robert Walser, and Christa Wolf. His translation of Hans Keilson’s Comedy in a Minor Key was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of 2010.