New Lives
Page 1
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Foreword to the American Edition
Editorial Note
The Letters of Enrico Türmer
[Saturday, Jan. 6. ’90]
Saturday, Jan. 13, ’90
[Sunday, Jan. 14, ’90]
Thursday, Jan. 18, ’90
Friday, Jan. 19, ’90
Friday, Jan. 19, ’90
Thursday, Jan. 25, ’90
Friday, Jan. 26, ’90
Monday, Jan. 29, ’90
Tuesday, Feb. 6, ’90
Wednesday, Feb. 7, ’90
Monday, Feb. 12, ’90
Tuesday, Feb. 13, ’90
Saturday, Feb. 17, ’90
Tuesday, Feb. 20, ’90
Tuesday, Feb. 20, ’90
Saturday, Feb. 24, ’90
Wednesday, Feb. 28, ’90
Thursday, March 1, ’90
Monday, March 5, ’90
Wednesday, March 7, ’90
Thursday, March 8, ’90
Friday, March 9, ’90
Monday, March 12, ’90
Tuesday, March 13, ’90
Tuesday, March 13, ’90
[Thursday, March 15, ’90]
Monday, March 19, ’90
Tuesday, March 20, ’90
Wednesday, March 21, ’90
Wednesday, March 21, ’90
Saturday, March 24, ’90
Wednesday, March 28, ’90
Friday, March 30, ’90
Saturday, March 31, ’90
Wednesday, April 4, 1990
Thursday, April 5, ’90
Sunday, April 8, ’90
Tuesday, April 10, ’90
Maundy Thursday, April 12, ’90
Good Friday, April 13, ’90
Tuesday, April 17, ’90
Wednesday, April 18, ’90
Friday, April 20, ’90
Saturday, April 21, ’90
Monday, April 23, ’90
Wednesday, April 25, ’90
Saturday, April 28, ’90
Sunday, April 29, 1990
Tuesday, May 1, ’90
Saturday, May 5, ’90
Monday, May 7, ’90
Tuesday, May 8, ’90
Wednesday, May 9, ’90
Thursday, May 10, ’90
Monte Carlo, Sunday, May 14, ’90
Wednesday, May 16, ’90
Thursday, May 17, ’90
Saturday, May 19, ’90
Monday, May 21, ’90
Ascension Day, May 24, ’90
Friday, May 25, ’90
Monday, May 28, ’90
Thursday, May 31, ’90
Friday, June 1, ’90
Sunday, June 3, ’90
Pentecost Monday, June 4, ’90
Friday, June 8, ’90
Saturday, June 9, ’90
Monday, June 11, ’90
Tuesday, June 19, ’90
[Wednesday, June 20, ’90]
Thursday, June 21, ’90
Thursday, June 28, ’90
Sunday, July 1, 1990
Tuesday, July 3, ’90
Wednesday, July 4, ’90
Friday, July 7, ’90
Sunday, July 8, ’90
Monday, July 9, ’90
Tuesday, July 10, 1990
Wednesday, July 11, ’90
Appendix
Schnitzel Hunt
Hundred-year Summer
The Spy
Voting
May
Titus Holm: A Dresden Novella
Last Practice
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
A Note About the Translator
Also by Ingo Schulze
Copyright
For Christa
For Natalia
For Clara
For Franziska
Foreword
SOME SEVEN YEARS AGO, while casting about for the stuff of a novel, I began to collect material on German entrepreneurs. Heinrich Türmer aroused my interest because within just a few years, he turned a newspaper into a small empire and brought the entire region along the border between Thuringia and Saxony under his influence. The collapse of his widely diversified enterprise was both unforeseen and sensational. As 1997 turned into 1998, debtors and tax collectors found themselves gazing at open doors and empty coffers. Türmer had fled to avoid prosecution. Others were left to pay the price of his speculations. The consequences are still being felt throughout the region.
During my research I stumbled on many extraordinary and unusual occurrences. One modest detail, however, led me to a discovery that could not have astonished me more.
Türmer’s first name was originally Enrico, and it was not until midyear 1990 that he began using the German form, Heinrich. The fact is, however, that I knew an Enrico Türmer who had been born and raised in Dresden. He was the brother of Vera Türmer—a friend with whom I had lost all contact after she left for the West—and also a schoolmate, although in a different class. I found it hard to believe that the overweight, elegantly dressed executive in newspaper photos could be the unremarkable Enrico with whom I had played soccer and sung in the choir.
I was even more surprised when my search under the keyword Türmer turned up a handsomely bound edition of short stories (Göttingen, 1998). I presume its publication could not have been possible without financial backing from the author. The scattered reviews were without exception derogatory. Rightly so. Were it not for the bitter after-taste of his flight, one might respect Türmer’s attempt to give a literary hue to the workaday world of the entrepreneur, with all its worries, pressures, and joys. In his foreword Türmer praises the world of work as “the promised land of tomorrow’s literature.”
My attempts to establish contact with Heinrich Türmer through his publisher met with no success. I did, however, receive a reply from Vera Barakat-Türmer. She even encouraged me in my intention of using her brother’s life as the basis for a novel. In a selfless and generous gesture, Vera Barakat-Türmer placed at my disposal all the papers her brother had already transferred to her care in 1990, thereby preventing the court from seizing them. And now, or so I hoped, I would be able to trace Türmer’s career to at least the initial phase of his entrepreneurship.
There were five dusty shoeboxes stuffed with diaries, letters, memos, and fragments of fictional prose—along with receipts, train tickets, shopping lists, and the like. Most of what Türmer had put to paper between 1978 and 1990—as a schoolboy in Dresden, a soldier in Oranienburg, a student in Jena, and a man of the theater in Altenburg—proved, however, to be of no use for my purposes. The juvenile tone was barely tolerable. Every sentence Türmer wrote, even in his letters—or so it seemed to me—kept one eye cast on an imaginary audience. Of telltale significance is the fact that he always made carbon copies of his own letters, but only very rarely kept those addressed to him.
A growing aversion to the figure of Türmer now threatened to jeopardize my plans, when I finally struck it rich.
Before me lay the letters to Nicoletta Hansen. Their quality led me to doubt Türmer’s authorship, but I sought in vain for any validation of my suspicions in the handwriting.
Among the letters to Nicoletta—at irregular intervals but from the same period, the first six months of 1990—were others addressed to Johann Ziehlke, a friend since boyhood. As in his correspondence with Nicoletta, here too Türmer appeared to have succeeded in ways that escaped him in his attempts at literary prose.
In response to my request, Vera Barakat-Türmer managed to persuade both Nicoletta Hansen and Johann Ziehlke to hand over the entire original correspondence for my personal inspection. In addition to this, Vera Barakat-T�
�rmer provided me with thirteen of her brother’s letters addressed to her.
Once I had put the letters to all three addressees in chronological order (from January 6 to July 11, 1990) and read them as a whole, there unfolded before me a panorama of a period when everything in Türmer’s life—and not just his—stood in the balance.
I read about a man of the theater who becomes a newspaper editor, about a failed writer who becomes a lucky entrepreneur. I read about a schoolboy whose longing for fame proves to be a curse; about a soldier who manages to avoid an attack on Poland, but not an attack by his comrades; about a student who falls in love with an actress; about a fence-straddler who becomes a hero against his will. I read about demonstrations and the first steps westward; I read about a brother who cannot live without his sister; I read about illness and exorcism—in a word, I read a novel.
And I decided to set aside my own plans for a novel and devote all my energies to publishing these letters.
To anticipate the question: Both the search for a publisher and discussions with the interested parties lasted several years.
It was not always possible to obtain the consent of all parties or to comply with their provisos. Almost everyone who came under Türmer’s gaze has learned how biased, indeed how false and malicious, his representations can sometimes be. Nor was the author of these remarks spared the experience of finding his image distorted in Türmer’s funhouse mirror.
My special thanks go to the actress Michaela von Barrista-Fürst and her son, Robert Fürst, with whom Türmer lived at the time. Without their understanding and magnanimity the project would have been doomed to failure. Elisabeth Türmer hesitated for some time to give her consent—after all, publication will not cast her son in the most favorable light. That she finally did agree merits acknowledgment. Likewise his schoolchum Johann Ziehlke, who later studied theology, had to jump over his own shadow to give his consent. Türmer’s flight was for him—as his confidant and chief executive—not merely a betrayal of friendship, it also brought with it major legal and financial difficulties for him and his family. What few deletions he requested were perfectly acceptable and insignificant in terms of the larger context.
At times consent was obtained only on the condition that a counter-position be included. I am very pleased that Marion and Jörg Schröder, his former newspaper colleagues, agreed to such a compromise. Last but not least, I would like to thank Nicoletta Hansen, who had severed her relationship with Türmer by 1995. In some instances such consent is lacking—as, for example, in the case of Dr. Clemens von Barrista—when people’s whereabouts could not be established.
As to the appendix and notes, I would like to state the following:
Twenty of the letters to Nicoletta Hansen were written on the reverse side of old manuscripts. These manuscripts are—and Türmer himself was the first to recognize this—mediocre at best, as well as fragmentary and incomplete. They are included in an appendix in order here and there to explicate matters excluded from or merely implied in the letters.
The footnotes are meant to facilitate the reading experience. What may seem superfluous to some will be greeted with thanks by other, particularly younger, readers. I have refrained from comment whenever circumstances are explained in some later context.
The attentive reader will not fail to notice that in writing his letters Türmer describes the same incident in very different versions depending on his addressee. It is not the editor’s task to assess the implications of this.
In response to my astonishment at Türmer’s almost manic obsession for self-revelation, Vera Barakat-Türmer offered the following explanation: “I always wondered why Enrico had such a great need to attach himself to people and open his heart to them. In every phase of his life there was someone whom he admired unconditionally and to whom he was almost slavishly devoted.”
Ingo Schulze
Berlin, July 2005
Foreword to the American Edition
TO BOTH MY ASTONISHMENT AND DELIGHT, I have become aware that Enrico Türmer’s story in letters and prose has met with lively interest outside of Germany, a testimony to the fact that a book can be addressed to national, indeed regional, concerns and still speak to the core of human experience.
Over the last year speculation about Türmer has run riot, and has remained speculation.
There is nothing more to be said now about Türmer’s whereabouts than was the case when New Lives was first published in October 2005. We know no more about it than we do about his state of health.
In the meantime, however, Türmer has become an author of literary interest to German readers and, with uncustomary swiftness, his slight volume a topic of academic research. This has brought me praise and recognition as a publisher, and also criticism that in my foreword I ranked Türmer’s prose as “mediocre at best.” Certainly that evaluation can now no longer be advanced. Nonetheless I prefer to maintain a critical skepticism in regard to the author of the letters and prose works presented here.
The American edition has been supplemented with a few additional notes.
I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to John E. Woods, my friend and excellent translator, for what has been an especially stimulating cooperative effort. Last and not least, my thanks to my American publisher for a generous and conscientious reception of this book.
I.S.
New Year’s Day 2008
Editorial Note
MOST OF THE LETTERS ARE HANDWRITTEN, a smaller number were typed, the last ones on a computer.
With few exceptions T. always kept a carbon copy or printout. Wherever there was both an original and a copy, only significant changes are noted, scratch-outs for instance. Words underlined by T. are set here in italics.
Matters are somewhat less transparent with regard to the small body of thirteen letters to Vera Türmer. Only three of the letters sent to Beirut have survived, all in the form of copies. The two faxed letters no longer exist as received letters. The final letter was never sent.
Errors in grammar and spelling have been corrected without remark, although both regionalisms and Türmer’s own idiosyncrasies were taken into consideration.
I.S.
THE LETTERS OF
Enrico Türmer
[Saturday, Jan. 6. ’90]
[To Vera]1
…like that?” Instead of trotting along behind us as usual so that he could demand a reward for every step he took, Robert bounded ahead like a puppy. We had to cross a hollow, the snow had a bluish sparkle and came up to our calves. Suddenly Robert gave a yell and started up the opposite slope. The moldy soil beneath the snow had not frozen. Michaela and I were running now too. When we stopped there was only the white field up ahead and grayish pink sky above us. We kept climbing, crossed a dirt road, and made straight for the woods. The wind swept the snow from the winter planting. I had to work hard not to be left behind. But the two of them didn’t turn back at the edge of the woods as we had agreed, but entered it. And so I also followed the sign pointing to Silver Lake.
The pond was frozen over. Before I could say anything Robert was skidding across the ice, with Michaela right behind. Robert, who is very proud that his voice is breaking, crowed something that I didn’t understand. Michaela shouted that I was chicken. But I didn’t want to risk it and stayed onshore. The snow hid most of the trash lying around, but there was a toy horse jutting up out of it. I was just bending down when I heard my name, turned around—and something struck me in the eye. It burned like hell.
I couldn’t see anything. Michaela thought I was putting on a show. It was snow, she shouted, just snow, a snowball!
It took me a couple of seconds to pull myself together. I was happy to feel Robert take my hand and begin to lead me. Not until that moment did I finally seem to realize that your letter wasn’t a dream, but that I had actually received it and that it was in my breast pocket. Yes, it was as if I had started to breathe again only now.
Plodding along behind us, Micha
ela told me not to carry on so. She probably thought I was going to cry. She thinks I’m a hypochondriac, even a malingerer, and was afraid I was just looking for some new excuse for calling in sick again.
She panicked in the middle of the field when a mutt from the village came racing toward us. He was barking and jumping around like crazy, but I was able to quickly quiet him down. Then I couldn’t get rid of him. The mangy animal escorted us all the way to the road leading downhill into town. Robert waved, and right away a car stopped. The woman sat ramrod straight behind the wheel and gave me a nod in the rearview mirror. The throbbing pain in my eye felt like my heart pounding inside my head. But the pain, or so it seemed to me, was something external, not anything that could hurt me, anything that could upset me, no matter what happened with my eye—because I have you!
At the entrance to the polyclinic I ran right into Dr. Weiss, the physician who usually attests that I’m too sick to work. “You don’t lose an eye that easily,” he said, grabbing me by the shoulder. He told me that I normally wouldn’t find anyone here at this time on a Friday, and that I should hold still—a doctor’s a doctor. “Let’s have a look,” he ordered, and turned me to the light. People going in and out shoved past us, I blinked into the fluorescent fixture. “Just a little vein,” he muttered, “just a burst vein. Nothing more than that!” Weiss left me standing there on the threshold as if he regretted he had even bothered with me. And called back that there was no need to be a crybaby, handing Michaela her triumph. By then it didn’t even hurt anymore.
The snow has already thawed again. The grass under the clotheslines looks like muck garnished with spinach. I have to drive Michaela to her performance. How easy everything is when I can think of you.
Love,
Your Heinrich2
Saturday, Jan. 13, ’90
Dearest Verotchka,
I’ve been going out every day, never for less than an hour. Besides which I’m responsible for shopping and cooking and now outshine Robert’s school cafeteria food, which is no great feat. Every evening Robert is granted his wish for the next day’s noon meal. Today I gave pancakes a try. And what do you know, Michaela ate up all the leftovers. Her cookbooks are the only thing I read these days.