by Heinz Rein
From the secure apartments, locked to the outside world with safety locks, bolts and chains, and with their inner, strictly protected secrets, people have been forced into a narrow and inescapable communality, all the more undesirable because it has come about forcibly and under the pressure of circumstances. A communality produced by random circumstances or external pressure rather than born of inner impulses will only ever last as long as the weight of external pressure weighs down on it. Mutual consideration and assistance are far from compulsory, and only occur when one’s own claims and advantages are not violated or hampered. The impulse to self-preservation is stripped entirely of all veils imposed from without, extreme lack of consideration is the rule of the moment, and perceiving one’s own fleeting advantages is a thousand times more important than yielding to any stirring of sympathy for others. The hard hearts that the National Socialist leadership demanded have now turned to stone, they are no longer capable of feelings, they are merely a part of the physical world.
Klose, the two Weigands and Lassehn have decided to avoid the shared air-raid cellar for as long as possible, Klose and Lucie Wiegand because of the terrible atmosphere of the cellar, Friedrich Wiegand and Lassehn because of the army patrols which are systematically combing all the cellars to put any halfway healthy men in fighting units of some kind. Admittedly Wiegand and Lassehn are now wearing Volkssturm armbands, and have armed themselves with carbines which they simply took from a house wall that they were leaning against, but Volkssturm men no longer have any business looking in an air-raid cellar, and if they do, they are entirely at the mercy or otherwise of the other people who live in the cellar with them. A word from a disgruntled neighbour in the cellar or a hysterical Hitler-worshipper can be enough to put a rope around your neck. So Wiegand and Lassehn prefer to stay in Klose’s flat and to put on their Volkssturm armbands when they step outside.
The men are chafing under the inactivity, only Lucie Wiegand is busy enough, preparing food and trying to bring something resembling order to the male government of the house; and it doesn’t matter to her if people laugh at her, she sweeps, wipes, washes and cleans as if it were the most natural thing in the world keeping a flat tidy in the midst of artillery fire.
‘That makes no sense at all, Lucie,’ Klose says, shaking his head as she runs the duster over the furniture, ‘the plaster is coming off the walls like a steady rain shower, and you … You really are curious creatures, you women.’
Lucie Wiegand looks over at Klose with a strange expression on her face. ‘You think so?’ she asks. ‘It does make sense, because at least temporarily it blocks out your thoughts.’
Dr Böttcher, who has just entered the room, gives her a shocked look. ‘Do you really think this pointless work frees you from your thoughts, Lucie?’
Lucie Wiegand nods. ‘Yes, that’s exactly it, Doctor.’
Wiegand gets to his feet, walks up to his wife and looks at her. ‘You’ve changed over the last few hours, Lucie,’ he says seriously. ‘Are you worried about the future?’
‘Women have their moods,’ Klose suggests. ‘It’ll pass.’
Lucie Wiegand leans against the window frame. ‘Worries about the future?’ She twists her mouth into a hesitant little smile. ‘No, it’s something else …’
‘What?’ Wiegand asks.
Lucie Wiegand waves his words away. ‘Oh, it’s not so interesting,’ she says, and starts working again.
Wiegand takes her by the shoulders and forces her to look at him.
‘Tell us, Lucie.’
Lucie shakes his hands away without saying a word. ‘Perhaps I can help you,’ Wiegand insists.
Again a little smile plays around her lips. ‘You can help me least of all, Fritz.’
A look of surprise appears in Wiegand’s serious face. ‘I don’t understand,’ he says helplessly.
‘It’s better that way, Fritz.’
A hubbub of wailing and bellowing is heard through the door that closes the room off from the restaurant area, then comes the sounds of a mouth organ and the stamping of hobnailed boots.
‘They’re making a shameful noise,’ Klose says, and points his thumb at the door. ‘Yes, the soldier’s death is a merry thing …’
Wiegand has reluctantly shaken off the interruption. ‘Oskar, Doctor, Lassehn, please could you leave me alone with my wife for a few minutes, or even better, we’ll go over …’
‘No, no,’ Lucie Wiegand says loudly, and immediately mutes her voice again, ‘you can both listen, that’s fine.’ She sits down heavily on a chair and rubs her hands together.
For a long minute the room is silent apart from the sound of ‘Lili Marlene’ coming through the door, and from outside the crash of exploding shells and the uninterrupted shooting from the anti-aircraft guns.
‘Fritz,’ Lucie Wiegand says at last, ‘I have to tell you this before you say anything terrible. You can’t stay here any longer.’
‘Right, young woman, what’s up?’ Klose asks in surprise. ‘You aren’t eating, you aren’t drinking, are you ill?’
‘Frau Wiegand probably has serious reasons for saying something like that,’ Dr Böttcher says.
‘Enough joking, Oskar,’ Wiegand says, dismissing him. ‘What’s happened, Lucie?’
Lucie Wiegand closes her eyes for a few seconds. ‘Robert is here!’ she says almost in a whisper, with a frightened look at the door.
‘How do you know that?’ Wiegand asks.
‘I heard him, through the door over there,’ Lucie Wiegand says, ‘and I’ve seen him too.’
‘Where?’
‘Here in the restaurant.’ Lucie Wiegand stands up, walks to the door and pushes aside the curtain that covers the glass in the door. ‘I heard a voice that pierced my heart like a knife, at first I didn’t want to believe it, it struck me as impossible, unthinkable, but then, when I looked through this window, no doubts were possible, it was Robert.’
‘Have you talked to him?’ Wiegand asks calmly.
Lucie Wiegand shakes her head. ‘How could I do that, Fritz!’ she replies, and steps back into the room. ‘It might put him on your trail.’
‘And the lad is quite capable of having his own father arrested,’ Klose adds. ‘In the name of the Führer, Göring and the murderous Himmler.’
‘But you’d like to talk to him, Lucie?’ Wiegand asks, and a grim wrinkle appears on her forehead. ‘And that’s why I have to get out of …’ He makes a hand gesture as if ushering himself out.
‘You mustn’t think that, Fritz!’ Lucie Wiegand shouts. ‘This isn’t about me, but bear in mind that all that separates him from us is a thin, plain door, and one loud word could be fatal to you. Just one kick and the door will splinter …’ She covers her eyes with her hands, her shoulders twitch.
‘Yes, just a door,’ Klose says, ‘a door made of ordinary oak wood with a little bit of plywood and some thin glass, a door like millions of other doors, but on one side is hell and on the other … No, that’s not right, I meant to say heaven.’
‘On this side justice and on that side injustice,’ says Lassehn, who has been sitting in silence up until now.
‘Good man,’ Klose says, ‘sometimes education has a value after all.’
‘You need to be particularly careful,’ Dr Böttcher says.
Lucie Wiegand flinches, something flies violently at the door making the glass rattle. ‘You’re so calm, Fritz …’
‘What should I get worked up about? The fact that Robert’s here? I’ve known that since yesterday.’
Lucie Wiegand flares up. ‘You knew?’
‘Yes, he was here in the pub yesterday afternoon.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘Luckily not, I was sitting in a dark corner, and in any case he was very busy with a few Volkssturm men.’
‘He has a wonderful turn of phrase,’ Klose says. ‘He was threatening us with hanging and so on. A charming child!’
‘Oskar!’ Wiegand says reproachfully, and looks quickly a
t the woman’s eyebrows.
Lucie Wiegand looks at the floor. ‘You don’t need to worry about me,’ she says firmly, ‘I know exactly what … what he’s like. I was about to say what my … yes, what my son is like, but everything in me rebels at the idea. My son – when you say that, there’s always some pride and tenderness in the words, my son, that’s the identification with him, that means he comes from my spirit. Oh!’ – a sigh issues from the slender woman – ‘How I wish I could be proud of him, how I wish I loved him, but I must be ashamed of him, and if I don’t hate him it’s only because I haven’t yet quite erased the image of him when he was a child.’
Wiegand strokes his wife’s hair. ‘Dr Böttcher once told me the psychical structure was the most immutable component of the human being.’
Dr Böttcher nods. ‘Yes, and it is already present and fully shaped before the womb expels the embryo. We must always come to terms with the constantly astonishing fact that while upbringing and environment may shape the intellect, they only strengthen or weaken the psychical and temperamental disposition, but can never crucially influence it.’
‘So that means that no education, no influence ever reaches the actual core of the soul,’ Lucie Wiegand says, ‘environment, upbringing and school are fundamentally quite inactive ingredients.’
‘To answer this question in the affirmative means to view the evolution of humanity with philosophical resignation,’ Dr Böttcher replies. ‘But if we do not wish to abandon ourselves, we must work on overcoming this dualism of soul and upbringing, or at least balance it out. And here I must correct you, Lucie, environment, upbringing and school are not in fact ingredients, they are counterweights. The complex of questions immediately becomes simpler once we employ the term “instinct” rather than “soul”.’
‘I understand,’ Lucie Wiegand says. ‘Instincts can be tamed, calmed, distracted, covered up, put to sleep …’
‘One can, in so far as they are negative instincts, simply take away their opportunity to develop,’ Dr Böttcher says, ‘but of course that requires a highly developed society, from which we are far removed. Still, we had advanced a few stages in that direction, but at that very time we experienced a relapse that destroyed decades and centuries of efforts, and which is so immense that we cannot grasp its whole extent. The fetters which were imposed upon the instincts and held them down have been loosened, and where that was not enough, they were burst, the instincts themselves were goaded … You were about to say something, Lucie?’
Lucie Wiegand nods. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘our son Robert is unfortunately a telling example of how correct that is. Many of the features that we observed in him even when he was a child have reached terrible maturity. Many of those things we saw at first only as deviations and weaknesses which would fade over time and perhaps even disappear entirely. But what happened to us was what happened to so many, indeed most German parents, who had the upbringing of their children torn from their hands at a crucial stage, who had no power over them, and hardly any influence, who had to endure their children becoming judges presiding over them, and in their unsuspecting naïvety and trustfulness running after the brown-clad rat catchers, indeed fell silent in front of their children, or against their better conscience spoke pro when they were contra, if they didn’t want to find themselves in mortal danger …’
‘… and those who didn’t,’ Klose continues, and now there is not a single laugh line on his broad face, ‘suffered the fate of …’ He gets to his feet and takes a red sheet from a pile of newspapers. ‘Read this, Joachim.’
Lassehn takes the red sheet of paper from him. He sees immediately that it is a poster, still rigid with stiffened glue, and reads:
‘In the name of the people!
The following, sentenced to death by the People’s Court for high treason
Erich Meissner
Alfred Urbans
Charlotte Urbans
were executed today.
Berlin, 12 September 1942.
The Reich Senior Prosecutor at the People’s Court.’
Lassehn looks awkwardly at Klose, who is still clutching the red piece of paper.
‘They were betrayed by their children,’ Klose says, ‘perhaps unwittingly, in all likelihood innocently …’
‘Innocently at any rate,’ Wiegand cuts in. ‘How can children be guilty? Is a cornfield guilty because it is hit by a hailstorm and doesn’t yield a harvest?’
‘You’re right, Fritz,’ says Klose. ‘The three people whose names you have just read, Joachim,’ he continues, turning to Lassehn, and taking the red sheet from him, ‘were good comrades, fearless and steadfast, they often sat with us here in this room. In spite of all the torture, promises and threats they never gave anyone away …’
Klose breaks off, no one speaks, they are all staring motionlessly at the blood-red sheet of paper, saying nothing, as if words might desecrate the memory of the three executed comrades.
Lassehn is very shaken, he didn’t know these three people, until this minute he never even knew of their existence. Involuntarily these three unknown people assume the faces of the two Wiegands and Dr Böttcher, but the features of Lotte Poeschke and the young fair-haired worker are mixed in with them. They sat here, in this room, around this table, people of flesh and blood, yes, blood, and then they were … A shudder runs through his body.
‘Have you become fearful, Joachim?’ asks Klose, who noticed him shivering.
‘Fearful?’ Lassehn asks. ‘Why should I be fearful all of a sudden?’
‘It just looked that way,’ Klose answers, and gives him a penetrating look. ‘You can still go back, Joachim, we’re not forcing you to stay here.’
‘No, Herr Klose,’ Lassehn says firmly. ‘How could there be any going back? And where to? To wilful ignorance, to bourgeois cluelessness? Anyone who has tasted the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge …’
Klose walks up to him and shakes his hand firmly. ‘Good, my boy,’ he says with a smile that bursts from his serious face, ‘you can stay, then. I didn’t expect anything else.’
Lassehn blushes slightly and tries to hide it by running his hand over his face. ‘I would like to resume our conversation, Doctor,’ he says. ‘A moment ago you identified soul with instinct. Isn’t that a materialization of the soul?’
‘I didn’t necessarily equate soul and instinct, Lassehn,’ Dr Böttcher replies, ‘they aren’t equal, in fact, but they live in such close quarters to one another that it is impossible to separate the two. The soul isn’t immaterial, by the way, Kant says the soul is an inner sense in connection with the body, and describes the reference to immaterial principles as a refuge of lazy reason.’
‘I haven’t thought enough about it before,’ Lassehn admits, ‘in my previous life I only ever allowed myself to be guided by random events, and apart from music there was nothing there in me.’
‘Let us not forget the present by dwelling on the past and on theory, gentlemen,’ Klose says, turning on the radio, ‘if we are lucky, there will be electricity and we can hear the Wehrmacht report.’
The dial of the radio lights up, the hum of the electric current swells, and the voice of the announcer appears as if from a long way away.
‘We nearly missed the latest Hitleriad,’ Klose says, waving a hand towards the radio in a broad gesture. ‘Please, ladies and gentlemen, hurry up, it has already begun.’
‘… gap in the front line with successful counter-attacks. The occupation of Bautzen was stubbornly defended against the enemy, which was attacking with strong forces. Advancing westwards, the Soviets entered Bischofswerda and Königsbrück.
South of Kottbus the Bolsheviks brought in reinforcements to strengthen their attacks against the area south of Berlin, and with their spearheads they reached the line of Treuenbrietzen-Zossen south of Königs Wusterhausen. Street battles are being fought in Kottbus and Fürstenwalde. To the east and north of Berlin the enemy pushed amidst fierce fighting towards the outer defence zone of the Reich
capital. Bitter fighting is under way in the line Lichtenberg-Niederschönhausen-Frohnau.’
‘I’ll fold,’ says Klose.
‘Don’t switch it off, Klose,’ Dr Böttcher says hastily.
‘Let’s see how far the other side …’
‘… section Dessau-Bitterfeld … battles with varying success … slowly gaining ground …’
‘… fierce fighting for the Mulde crossings … Bitterfeld lost …’
‘… north of Chemnitz … local breakthroughs …’
‘… area around Stuttgart … violent fighting … city surrounded …’
‘… north of Tübingen … gain further ground …’
‘… Gaullist units advancing towards the Kaiserstuhl …’
‘Nice little menu,’ Klose observes, and turns the radio off again.
‘Give us the map, Oskar,’ Wiegand says.
‘A big situation report in the little general staff,’ Klose laughs, and takes a brightly coloured brochure from the bookshelf. ‘I would never have imagined that Ullstein’s Thousand Journeys Around Berlin would one day find use as a general staff map for a battle for Berlin. Sacred Ullstein, how have you changed! Sic transit … What is it again, Doctor?’