by Ingo Schulze
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130. Türmer was born on Nov. 29, 1961, and was fifteen years old that autumn (1977).
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131. In publishing this I am, willy-nilly, opening myself to the charge of being the enabler of T.’s conceit. I wholeheartedly reject any such an interpretation of my actions and wish to point out that what I am offering here is a critical account of T.’s life, intended to serve as a cautionary tale.
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132. Crossed out: squander.
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133. Since I myself participated in these same gym classes, I can only assert that T.’s descriptions are inaccurate.
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134. Both the original and the carbon copy of this “letter” end without complimentary close or signature. Caught up in telling his story, T. had evidently completely forgotten N. H.
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135. On May 5, 1990, that is, barely five weeks away.
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136. Although perhaps a perfectly acceptable idiom in English, T. has mixed his German idioms here: “burned our ships” and “destroyed our bridges.”
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137. There are things about this narrative that arouse suspicion. How, for example, could four such packages have been stuffed into one slim attaché case?
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138. Apparently Barrista had paid on a 1:1 East-mark, D-mark basis.
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139. T. means a New York Yankees baseball cap, whose logo is an interlinked N and Y.
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140. Jörg and Georg were fifty-fifty co-owners of the company according to civil code.
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141. It is inexplicable why they are so secretive around Robert.
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142. CDs were hardly known in the East at that point.
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143. In his letter of March 15, 1990, he mentions that Barrista has two children.
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144. T. did not have a bad voice, but he couldn’t carry a tune on his own. Every attempt at a round fell apart when it was time for him to enter. He always needed someone singing in his ear.
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145. Respect for rights of privacy preclude mention of his name.
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146. In creating the category of a German Democratic Republic face, T. evidently was unaware of just how problematic the notion of a national and/or state physiognomy really is.
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147. Publication evidently never occurred.
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148. Neustadt and Loschwitz are two neighborhoods in Dresden inhabited by a relatively high percentage of artists.
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149. T. constantly let opportunities to take action pass him by. Particularly when one assumes that these letters are his attempt at a critical self-accounting, it is amazing that he never condemns his own temporizing.
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150. What the latter has to do with the former remains T.’s secret.
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151. A somewhat too offhanded mention of a truly remarkable offer.
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152. In view of T.’s immense correspondence, this statement may seem surprising. And yet both Johann and V. T. were too much a part of his memories, which is evidently why only Nicoletta Hansen was considered as the addressee for his description of “the path that led him astray.” Cf. note 2, The Letters of Enrico Türmer.
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153. T. felt like an “amputee” once before, when he was describing to Johann Ziehlke what it was like to lose his car. Cf. the letter of March 13, 1990.
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154. Upon completing preparatory seminary, Johann Ziehlke had only one choice: to study theology at a church college, since admission to a university required a high school diploma.
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155. Such candor when dealing with N. H. is surprising.
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156. Due to its dilapidated state the building was torn down three years ago.
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157. Overgrown lots that had been left unused after several buildings were torn down in 1988–89.
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158. The previous letter was written on Sunday morning. The discrepancy between the “strange sense of joy” mentioned in it and the “nightmare” described here remains unexplained.
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159. This letter was sent to V. T. by fax.
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160. Imposing on Georg.
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161. Picasso, Fassbinder, Schygulla.
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162. He is referring to the theater in Rudolstadt.
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163. The inaccuracy of this characterization of N. H. says a great deal about T.
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164. By his own admission, T. usually awoke around four in morning.
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165. T.’s last letter to Johann was dated three days previous.
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166. There is no explanation for why T. fails to mention Michaela’s miscarriage.
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167. This is the first time that T. uses the word “confession,” but from this point on he almost always uses the term for these chronicles.
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168. According to V. T., she was never subjected to a “Berlin embargo.”
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169. Apparently an allusion to poems by “precocious wunderkinder.”
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170. Schulpforta—among the famous students of the boarding school there were Klopstock, Fichte, Ranke, and Nietzsche. Röcken—Friedrich Nietzsche’s birthplace; the philosopher’s childhood home, the church where he was baptized, and his grave are located there.
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171. Bernardo Bellotto, (called Canaletto), 1721–80, painted many views of the city of Dresden. T. evidently means the famous painting Dresden From the Right Bank of the Elbe Below the Augustus Bridge (1748).
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172. Heinrich Böll had given a speech in praise of Reiner Kunze on the occasion of his being awarded the Büchner Prize in 1977, the same year in which he left the GDR.
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173. Figures in Homer’s Iliad.
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174. This letter was sent to V. T. by fax.
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175. Refugee camps near Beirut. In 1982, after the invasion by the Israeli army, massacres of Palestinian refugees were carried out by the Christian militias.
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176. Countries that had had military dictatorships.
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177. The putsch by Chilean General Pinochet on September 11, 1973, led to mass arrests. Many of those arrested were tortured and murdered; about three thousand died. The singer and songwriter Victor Jara’s hands were crushed, but not hacked off, before he was shot.
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178. Budyonny—a general in the cavalry of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Isaac Babel—famous for his short-story collection, Red Cavalry—served under Budyonny.
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179. On Dec. 13, 1981, the Polish military, under the leadership of General Jaruzelski, declared martial law throughout Poland and banned the independent labor union, Solidarnóśćc. T. evidently assumed that N. H. would recognize the significance of “December 13th.”
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180. Unless on duty, officers slept at home and first had to make their way to the base.
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181. Pejorative Saxon slang for people who live on the Baltic coast.
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182. Evid
ently T. considered her support a matter of course.
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183. Gojko Mitíc was famous for his roles as an Indian chief in GDR films. For a long time he was considered the epitome of male beauty. T. is assuming that N. H. knows who he was.
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184. Translator’s note: Käferchen means “little beetle,” or better perhaps, “little bug.”
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185. Barrista’s entourage evidently had considerable practice at scenes like this.
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186. Monetary union with the Federal Republic was scheduled to begin July 1, 1990.
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187. T. initially gave the sum as twelve hundred, cf. his letter of March 28, 1990.
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188. T. was now in the second six months of his eighteen-month service.
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189. This is a surprising statement inasmuch as at the end of his previous letter to N. H., T. had claimed that he was “not going to tolerate” Nikolai in his presence anymore.
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190. Understandably enough, T. wanted to conceal his homoerotic relationship with Nikolai, but was also evidently unable to do without Nikolai in his cast of characters.
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191. Forty-eight-hour sentry duty.
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192. T. knew whereof he spoke. His letters to Nicoletta read like a settlement of accounts with a life made up of “intentionally arranged incidents.” At the same time the question necessarily arises as to whether his letters to Nicoletta are not also “an intentionally arranged incident.”
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193. Corporal stripes are incomprehensible as a reason.
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194. V. T. and Johann Ziehlke are in agreement that in the first few days after their discharge, T. and Nikolai were a couple.
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195. T. feared any and all competition in this regard as well.
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196. T. leaves unmentioned the fact that he knew the person in question from his school-days: to wit, the publisher of these letters. I would have loved to know T.’s opinion of my texts, but he never again refers to them here.
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197. The Army District Command was where one’s identification papers were returned, after having been held there for the duration of one’s military service.
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198. The edition he means was probably that of the Verlag Kultur und Fortschritt [Culture and Progress Publishers] (Berlin, 1964), on the cover of which is a saber-brandishing, mustachioed cavalryman.
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199. Matthias Domaschk of Jena was arrested on April 10, 1981, and the following morning was handed over to the district office of the Ministry for State Security in Gera. On April 12th, Matthias Domaschk died in the ministry’s pretrial detention facility in Gera under circumstances still unexplained today. The Ministry for State Security reported that he had hanged himself with his own shirt.
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200. An elegant new spelling. One presumes it was also meant to invoke echoes of Beethoven.
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201. A note paper-clipped to this carbon copy contains the following quoted observation: “What one perceives in the presence of one’s beloved is only a negative that must first be developed when one returns home and can use the darkroom of one’s own interior, the entrance to which is ‘nailed shut’ as long as one can see the other person.” Thus far no source for this quote has been determined.
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202. The five weeks of reserve training were graded as if they were regular coursework. Anyone who did not “pass” was dismissed from the university.
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203. A description of the enemy on the basis of certain predetermined criteria.
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204. Officers were usually not from one’s own university or technical school.
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205. The firm was a synonym for the State Security.
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206. The analogy between the situation described here and that in which T. now found himself as a letter writer is certainly self-evident. Both women “fit in with all the rest” and into his “calculation” as well.
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207. As a rule each student received two hundred marks per month, with which one could just eke out an existence without assistance from home or taking a part-time job.
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208. “I still recall that ‘Maria Theresia’ meant Bratislava and ‘go to work’ meant Brno, but I’ve forgotten how the mistake happened and whether it was Enrico’s or my fault.”—Sabine Kraft in a letter to the editor.
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209. Power plants in the “three-country triangle” of the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland had badly damaged the flora and fauna of these low mountains.
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210. Beer.
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211. Apparently an allusion by T. to an imaginary quasi-incestuous relationship with V. T. This fantasy later takes on outright delusional dimensions.
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212. What lay behind this offer was the outcome of local elections held on May 6, 1990. Johann had campaigned as a candidate of Alliance 90, but had failed to be elected to the city council.
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213. He means that the page count can be increased or decreased in increments of four.
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214. On March 29th, the executive board of the German Bundesbank had recommended an exchange rate of 2:1, arguing that the GDR economy could not support a conversion at 1:1. The new head of government in the GDR, de Maizière, was afraid that cutting wages in half would result in “intolerable social tensions,” and advocated a 1:1 rate for salaries and pensions. On July 1st savings up to four thousand marks (and up to six thousand marks for citizens over sixty) were to be exchanged at 1:1, anything beyond that at 2:1. Since the exchange rate at the end of January had been 5:1 or even higher, T. is engaging in one of his typical speculations.
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215. For the local elections of May 6, 1990.
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216. T. surely knows more than he admits here, cf. his article in the Altenburg Weekly, no. 13; the most extensive and well-researched study on the history of the Altenburg hand reliquary has been done by Hans Dörpfeldt, published unfortunately in an obscure periodical, Heidelberger Studien zur katholischen Dogmatik [Heidelberg studies on Catholic dogmatics], no. 66, p. 55 ff.; cf. P. Schnabel, Die Heimkehr des Patrons [The patron returns home], in Altenburger Pfade in die Vergangenheit [Altenburg paths into the past], no. 1, p. 7 ff.; suitable as an introduction to the topic, especially for young readers, is Arbeiten und Beten mit Bonifatius [Work and prayer with Boniface] (Altenburg, 2004), 12th edition.
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217. T. apparently had in mind Horace: Works in One Volume, Manfred Simon, ed. and trans. (Berlin, 1972).
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218. A sweet Romanian white wine.
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219. T. was evidently still of this opinion in May 1990.
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220. It is rather unlikely that Roland, who according to V. T. was relatively well informed about conditions in the GDR, would have asked such a question. Perhaps here as well T. is sacrificing truth for the sake of a punch line.
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221. When had he ever previously arrived “at just such a point”?
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222. A standard textbook.
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223. By now at least it should be apparent how preoccupied T. was with questions of composition when writing these letters.
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224. It sho
uld be remembered that, as he did with the majority of his letters, T. made a carbon copy of these pages.
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225. The assumption that there was a homoerotic relationship between Johann and T. sheds relatively clear light on this enigmatic situation. The following remark from the copy, rendered illegible in the original, also indicates as much: “Just as with Vera before him, I had no choice but to interpret this as Johann’s payback for my love affair with Nadja.”
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226. On Dec. 6, 1989, representatives of the civil rights movement had, as was the case in many other towns as well, occupied the local offices of State Security.
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227. T. evidently thought he was being reduced to a “deduction.” It is said of him that later on he would make a point of crumpling up the bill after a business lunch and tossing it into the ashtray. (As reported by Johann Ziehlke.)
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228. T. was probably afraid that Frau Schorba would be too heavy for a room declared off-limits by the police.
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229. This letter is among the most illegible, due primarily to cross-outs and insertions, especially in the final third.
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230. From this point on T. insinuates—evidently intentionally—a suspicion. It is as if no letter can fail to mention some connection between Vera and State Security. And yet nothing in his presentation, either to this point or afterward, points to any such relationship. An unbiased reader will be unable to share T.’s qualms on the basis of remarks made here by V. T.
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231. The next three lines are blacked out in both original and copy.
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232. Crossed out: if only for this one night.
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233. Crossed out: and all my problems.
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234. T. is mistaken here. Sunday was the 13th.
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235. V. T. lived in West Beirut during her three months there. On April 18, 1990, a school bus got caught in an exchange of fire between rival Christian militias. Fifteen children lost their lives.
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236. Saxon slang for “head,”“skull.”
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237. T. means dozen. Correct terminology, as we shall soon see, would have spared him a moment of panic.
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238. The agreement with Barrista was that he would risk everything, not just his interim winnings. Judged on that basis, T. did fail.