Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  Here Student Cresspahl paused, for the first and only time. She was saying something true, for once, but she felt uncertain. What arises, what happens, when consciousness suddenly formulates a perception it had shrugged off nine hours earlier? An afterimage? On the anonymous scrap of paper in the coat pocket, “barbed wire” had been just a pair of words; now the twisted lines with their braided-in barbs were a mental image, and underlying them was the tone of voice from the evening’s broadcast of the BBC: barbed wire, in English. How, from the miserable feeling of tedium last night at yet another wave of posters, could the resolve arise to testify to barbed wire, as strong as if it had been taken in the morning?

  – After intensive self-examination: Student Cresspahl began to confess, but then stopped.

  She remembered Kurt Müller. “Kutschi,” chairman of the Communist Youth League in Germany in 1931. Sentenced in 1934 to six years in prison for “Preparation for Treason,” then moved to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After the elimination of Hitler’s battalions, state chairman of the Communist Party, Lower Saxony; deputy chair of the national party, 1948; member of the West German Parliament, 1949. Under the protection of parliamentary immunity, paid an official visit to the German Sovietnik Republic, and was reported as “missing” on March 22, 1950. Two months later, the M.f.S. had confessed and admitted that same date as the date of Kutschi Müller’s arrest. He was sitting behind bars and wires on this very evening; if the members of the FDJ were marching for anything, it was, in fact, for this reinforced wire.

  She remembered a boy in 10-A-I arrested over a pop song. Tipsy at a class party, he had altered the dreamy image in the first line of a sentimental number: “When, by Capri, the red sun sinks into the sea.” Instead of “sun” he’d sung “fleet”—to be flip, and probably feeling sure that his position as president of his FDJ class chapter was bulletproof protection. Paulie Möllendorf it was, and his fast talk in front of the court had probably hurt him more than helped. Four years in prison.

  She remembered Axel Ohr. Axel, though eighteen, wanted to go to the Germany Rally of Free Youth too, his luggage seeming a bundle of newspapers; he had almost seven pounds of electrolytic copper inside it, which he was planning to sell in the forbidden half of Berlin, to buy baling twine for Johnny Schlegel’s agricultural commune. Johnny got off unscathed because Axel had dreamed up this contribution to the work in the silent chambers of his own mind; Axel was threatened with the maximum punishment, five years in prison. True, there was a law against exporting nonferrous metals, but that didn’t help bring in the harvest. Axel was in pretrial detention in the basement, a dungeon surrounded by wire with barbs. When the New Free Youth went marching in their blue shirts, it was also for that.

  Young Friend Cresspahl repeated, after lengthy consideration: she had noticed no barbed wire. Asked what the FDJ were marching for, she gave the desired answer. She was admonished to inspect any visual advertising in future with greater attentiveness (she’d claimed morning sleepiness), in the interests of dialectically utilizing the perniciousness she herself had invoked. And keep your ears open too, got it? – Vas slushayu, yes sir: Student Cresspahl said, which went over well with the interrogator although it was also something of a bitter pill since he was equally proud of his nationality and of his skill in concealing it. With a sudden laugh like that of someone annoyed at himself, he answered with sudden unexpected rudeness: Da svidanya. Until next time. That’s a promise.

  Outside the gate of the educational institution almost every student Cresspahl had ever exchanged a word with or shared a smile with stood waiting. About seventy of them were there to make sure this child would be returning to their midst. People shouted “Hurrah!” the way brave young princesses used to be cheered in the old days. There was singing.

  Lise Wollenberg had gone home.

  And Student Gantlik, just visible on the bridge over the city moat, made off in a hurry as soon as she’d seen enough. She continued to consider it unwise for the time being to reveal even the scrap of a connection, a bond, between herself and Student Cresspahl. Yes you do talk like that, Anita.

  We almost unanimously felt that Bettina must have thrown herself at the investigators from Schwerin while bullying and threatening the students under her as though we were dangerous vermin, lepers, contagious, keep your distance! (and again, though, like she wanted to bite us). Maybe we stepped aside a bit too eagerly when she came marching up with the two gentlemen in their leather coats. She was drooping now; we heard her lamenting, as she said goodbye: And it had to happen in my school, of all places, Mr. Inspector!

  She now turned violently on us, ordering us to get water and scrub brushes from the janitor’s and get the rest of the handbills off the school walls. (The school’s front door—two large slabs of oak, prewar manufacture, from 1910—had been taken off its hinges and hauled off by the Gneez police.) And so the young dandy from Hans-and-Sophie-Scholl Street, Schwerin, was once more forced out of his black cherry–colored car, polished to a mirrorlike sheen (from the people-owned firm Eisenacher Motor Works, EMW, not a Bavarian BMW), to reprimand Comrade Selbich and keep the crowd of suspected culprits from further studying even the remaining small print as they scratched away at it.

  And he singled out Student Cresspahl again for a parting word. He planted himself in front of the young lady in a comradely pose, in his made-to-measure easy-to-clean suit, and informed her: his name was Lehmann. (I would recognize him to this day, from a harelip too hastily repaired. But let him languish in boredom in Leningrad or Prague; why should I bother him.) – A name to remember: he added, revealing himself as one of the ruling powers of this New Mecklenburg.

  Now after this did Bettinikin still manage to make the leap from principal pro tem to principal?

  Anyone worried about that will of course set out on the long summer vacation of 1950 with a heavy heart, unsettled, practically troubled, with little prickles like a swarm of ants all over their brain as they fall asleep.

  – Three times you could have nailed her during the interrogation: Marie says; she’s complaining.

  – First of all, Bettina did get her knuckles rapped. Plus we had promised each other: only in an emergency.

  – If that wasn’t an emergency then tell me what is!

  – Coming right up!

  July 31, 1968 Wednesday

  The New York Times wants to show us a helicopter from which four crates are dangling, with supplies for Marine outposts near the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam. A photo that looks like propaganda; no news value whatsoever.

  In Kosice, the gentlemen from the Kremlin and those from the Hradshin are keeping the topic under discussion at the Junction Club in Cierna to themselves. The ones from Moscow are reported to have stomped out at 10:30 last night, looking rather angry, and boarded their green train. In order to have something, anything to report, Auntie Times describes the Czechoslovakian train cars as, unlike their Soviet counterparts, painted blue.

  Pravda, the press organ of Soviet Truth, reprints the East German understanding of quiet, normal life on the streets of Prague these days, along with their conjectures about what’s going on behind the facades. As evidence. It also puts out, in photographic facsimile, a letter from ninety-eight workers at Auto-Praha asking the Soviet troops to linger in the country.

  And a New York City councilman has spent a week living in East Harlem, posing as a writer; now he says he knows about life there. He saw no rats, but said he didn’t think rats could stand that building on 119th Street between Park and Lexington.

  Personnel changes during the first half of the 1950–51 school year in Gneez, Mecklenburg:

  First, to open the new term, a stiff-legged man (blue shirt) climbed the podium to the lectern facing the assembled students and introduced himself as the new principal, with all the powers and privileges pertaining thereto, and with the enameled badge (SED) showing clasped hands (KPD, SPD) on his lapel: Dr. Eduard Kramritz. He pressed his wire-framed (now gold-plated-wire-frame
d) glasses into the sores on his nose and announced: Some of you already know me. Applause. The rest will get to know me—soon. Applause.

  Of course Bettina Selbich was innocent in the matter of the posted query to the members of the FDJ about why they were marching. But at an institute of secondary learning conducted with all due vigilance such questions never come up in the first place, do you follow that, Comrade? In addition, the district school board had received two letters, from the typewriter of the councilman, since replaced, and from the hand of Dr. Julius Kliefoth, both evincing knowledge of Latin, remarking on the moral maturity required in anyone called upon to thoughtfully supervise the course of education in young student souls (by this they meant us; Kramritz being made principal must have come as an embarrassing surprise to them). The Unity Party, meanwhile, showed a certain generosity in not rejecting Bettina altogether; it extended her waiting period as a candidate for membership by a full year.

  Changes in the teaching staff: Dr. Gollnow is retiring, two years past the mandatory date. In her place we have Eberhard Martens—soldierly bearing, blond crew-cut, “the Evil Eye.” Student-teacher in German, fulfilling his internship with the members of what is now class 11-A-II: Mathias Weserich, MA in language and literature, Leipzig University: another limper, somewhat more flexible at the knees, whose greeting took the form of a bow from the neck, his mouth pulled open to almost a rectangle full of unnaturally white teeth. Colleague Selbich’s new assignment: instructor in German, and also Contemporary Studies. Applause.

  Student Gantlik (alone) and Students Pagenkopf and Cresspahl (together) had paid a visit to Erdmuthe Gollnow at the start of the summer. Tight bun, friendly gaze down into cups of apple blossom tea, grandfather clock, dresser with knick-knacks, sofa with curved wooden arms. Anita had been stymied by the niceties of visiting; it was from Anita’s two schoolmates that Mrs. Gollnow later heard that Anita too had meant to ask her to seize the day when the keys to the principal’s office were dangled in her presence. The old lady sighed, and sighed again, and thanked them for the trust they placed in her, and said she was too weak. (In terms of health she was in better shape than Alma Witte.) – Ah, yes!: she croaked in a bouncy voice: Ah to be sixty again!

  As the assembled faculty stepped humbly over to the right side of the podium, the Central School-Group Authority of the Free German Youth (FDJ ZSGL!) clambered up and took their places behind the red-draped tables, a wall of cloth. (That, Marie, was to keep any undignified leg movements from diminishing the devotion of the Young Friends on the auditorium floor.) Beneath the talons of Picasso’s bristling dove, Sieboldt and Gollantz surrendered their offices, thereby entering the Rostock University groups. The secretary and treasurer resigned, pleading overwork in view of their coming Abitur. Elected as new secretary to organize the school group, by a vote of 288 to 23: Dieter Lockenvitz, 11-A-II. As president, with 220 votes and numerous abstentions: Gabriel Manfras, 11-A-II. Young Friend Manfras, step forward!

  We’d never have thought that Gabriel had it in him to give a speech! Yet what a ringing voice this taciturn child suddenly launched from his throat. Maybe he was making up for the silence he kept from first period to last, from class visits to the theater to end-of-year parties; our old idea that he was shy was now instantly forgotten. The meeting now proceeds to the election of the presidium. Nominations please. Dr. Kramritz, as friend and partner of the FDJ school group. Acclamation. The beanpole gym teacher, because he rakes us over the coals politically too. Good-humored laughter. The members of the ZSGL, of course. I propose as first member of the honorary presidium Comrade Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, a shining example to us all for his mighty labors for peace; his daily efforts for the improvement of the proletarian capital; the opening of the Great Northern Seaway; the draining of the swamps of Colchis; not least as thanks and reward for his completion of that work of genius on Marxism and questions of linguistics. Frenzied applause, breaking off suddenly. The president of the People’s Republic of Poland, Bolesłav Bierut, in honor of the peaceful encounter of our two peoples at the Oder and Neisse Rivers. Comrade Mao, liberator of the People’s Republic of China and partner of Comrade Stalin. The writer Thomas Mann, in memory of his late brother Heinrich, recipient of the Goethe-bicentennial National Prize, who displayed in his journey to Weimar the realism that shines forth from every buttonhole of his writings! The author of the work The Socialist Sixth of the World, a theologian ostracized in his own land, Hewlett Johnson, the “Red Dean” of Canterbury! The cheering, standing audience is requested to go easy on the bleachers. Now Young Friend Manfras has the floor, to present an appraisal of the prospects for world peace, and also in Gneez.

  Gabriel looked strangely at us, gripped the front of the lectern with his right hand, propped the knuckles of his left against the bottom edge in back, looked down at his manuscript, and was ready to give a speech. (The boy standing there had been given advance warning that he would be nominated and elected; he had a lecture all prepared.) Young Comrade Manfras began, appropriately, with the date: September First, the Day of Peace, we too pledge that. The criminal invasion by North American troops and their South Korean mercenaries into the northern republic, whose leader we all. Well might the West Germans groaning under the yoke of capitalism fear the coming war—they are buying droves of sailboats to flee in, hoarding gas, standing in long lines outside the South American consulates; we, on the other hand, enjoy safety and security under the newly elected general secretary of the newly founded central committee of the Unity Party, W. Ulbricht, and the disgraceful use of the nickname Sachwalter, “Custodian,” for Walter U. can only reflect pitifully on anyone with a German dictionary at his. The Party’s vigilance, as demonstrated in the unmasking of leading comrades Kreikemeyer and company, co-conspirators of the American agent provocateur Noel H. Field and his disgusting three-way marriage; this vigilance we too shall. The imminent collapse of the British Empire at the side of the USA can only. The hateful interview of the West German chancellor with the organ of high capitalism, The New York Times, showing only his contempt for humanity; his proposal for the quick reestablishment of a German military force will inevitably lead to. We adjourn this meeting with the song: “We are the Young Van-Guard / of the Pro-le-ta-ri-at!”

  In Gabriel Manfras’s whirlwind world tour, he had woven in the obscure German word Diversion more than once, and at first those among us who knew some Latin thought: What an old-fashioned fellow. But when he added into the mix the people with the paste brushes who had been so interested in the goal the FDJ was marching for, and called them American diversants, the grammatical connection was at last broken for his listeners; only after the song could we find out from Anita that there is indeed a Soviet word, diversiya, meaning in no way a distracting maneuver but rather an attack. From the side? No, a frontal assault, or all around actually: Anita said, embarrassed. If only she’d finally realized that we’d long been impressed with her work for Triple-J, as jobs go!

  As for Gabriel Manfras, we now had a pretty good idea how he’d spent his summer.

  Dr. Kramritz, too, had undergone a course designed to hone him to a fine political edge, during which he had kind of misplaced his family. Lost sight of his wife. And so propositioned his colleague Bettina Selbich, who by then was sporting a tight-fitting blouse, non-blue, and a charmingly humble manner. In case of divorce, so he’d know where to turn for refuge. Rumors wanted to supply a slap in the face at this point; an eyewitness, Klaus Böttcher, had seen a couple in tears on the wooded path winding its way around the Smœkbarg. But now Bettina’s landlord won his eviction case; she could find a single room only in the Danish Quarter; she was commended by her party group for moving closer to the working class; she was scared of Wieme Wohl. And who should move into the full apartment on Cathedral Court, three rooms with kitchen basement bathroom and a view across the parish meadows down to the rows of poplars on the shore of Gneez Lake, but the reconciled Kramritz family. “Protecting the cadre of specialists,” it’s cal
led. If you want to protect your cadre, choose wisely.

  The news of Thomas Mann’s signature on the Stockholm Appeal—calling for a ban on nuclear weapons irrespective of whose—had consoled us about our own. A year later we were ashamed.

  This “document” was not new to me . . . as part of a photomontage purporting to show me in the act of signing the Stockholm Appeal in Paris in the spring of 1950. I am shown on this occasion wearing a suit that I did wear in summer 1949, but did not bring to Europe in 1950. The black tie I had tragic cause to wear in mourning in May 1949 is visible in the photograph too. How this came to pass is something I am neither able to discover nor interested in. What I do know, and what I have said, truthfully, is that I did not sign my name to the Stockholm Appeal. © Katja Mann