I Sleep in Hitler's Room (27 page)

Gabriele comes from the elite of German society, and she is an integral part of it. But this does not make her a lover of Germany. Her home is Die Linke, and her heart is in North Korea. She’s for peace, but the nuclear buildup in North Korea is obviously not in her worries. What
is
there, she tells me, is the German education system. “They rewrite history in the schools. They teach about the six million Jews but not about the twenty-three million Russians.”

I think Gabriele should meet other Berliners. Mr. Lippmann for example.

I meet this eighty-two-year-old at the bar of the Park Inn Hotel in Alexanderplatz.

“My parents are in Auschwitz,” he says when I ask him to tell me about his family.

They were deported in 1943, in the “last transport of Jews from Berlin. We didn’t know they were killing Jews until after the war.” He stayed in hiding for two more years, which is how he survived. When the war was over, he didn’t leave Germany because “after the war everything was cheap here.”

That’s it? That’s why you stayed, because of money?

“No. After the war, it was easy to go out with the girls in Germany.”

There were many of them, and very few men.

Unlike Gabriele, he says that the “Germans are anti-Semitic. I know, I live here.”

Why are they anti-Semitic?

“It’s in them. People have tendencies, like fear. Why? It’s in them. Germans have anti-Semitism in them. It’s inside them. But I won’t leave this country, I was born here.”

Mr. Lippmann does not have children. “I didn’t want to bring children into this world,” he says to me.

Before coming to Germany, I had no clue how complicated and complex this country is.

I move on. I go to meet Holger Franke, who founded the famous Theater Rote Grütze in 1972 in Berlin. He would like Germany not to win the WM because a win would help the present government, which Holger regards as a catastrophe.

Would he like, let’s say, North Korea to win the cup?

“It would be nice if North Korea could win, but they are already out.”

Another North Korea lover here. What party does he belong to?

“I voted for Die Linke,” says Holger.

Then, upon reflection, he admits a big sin:

“When I watch the game, in the moment, in my heart, I want Germany to win.”

What did you feel when people screamed and sang “Deutschland!” on the streets after Germany’s victory?

“I felt ashamed. I have no erotic feelings for the German flag.”

Holger should know a thing or two about eroticism. The main idea behind his theater was to open up eroticism, “to make eroticism part of public discussion.” His theater became a success practically over night, and precisely because of this reason

I am all for open eroticism. I ask Ricky, Holger’s wife and thirty years his junior, to open up and tell me what’s going on in the couple’s bedroom.

“My husband has a sexy ass and I kiss it every morning,” says Ricky. “Three days after we met we had sex. He was married at the time, to a wonderful singer, but I sat next to him, we held hands, and I saw the stars on his face. We were sitting on the terrace, it was a full moon, and I said to him, ‘This is love.’ His wife was not home at the time. Holger’s daughter had a mobile home outside and we went there. We closed the door and then we—”

Holger remarks: “It was not an affair, it was love. For my wife it was horror, for me it was terrible because I had to decide between my wife and my lover. I loved my wife too, but with Ricky it was like a dream, a dream that lived in a bubble inside me and suddenly burst into reality. We were like two children.”

OK Holger, what happened after you and Ricky closed the door at the mobile home? Tell me all!

“Would you like some red wine?” comes Holger’s reply.

He might believe in, and preach, open eroticism. But preaching is one thing, action is another. Holger spent many years teaching and preaching the message, but somehow he forgot to include himself.

Holger, sixty-eight years old, is not an idiot. He sees the paradox between his decades-old teachings and his last ten minutes with Yours Truly. So Holger offers to go for a little walk, where I can see his wonderful neighborhood. Down deep Holger hopes that I’ll stop asking him about his sex life.

Not far from Holger’s house is Caravan Town.

On a small piece of land that used to be a no-man’s-land between East and West Berlin, there’s a little caravan neighborhood. Established by young people with a taste for alternative lifestyles, these squatters decided that a no-man’s-land is their land. It’s a community, so to speak, of people who live in little structures that look quite primitive, very similar to those of Jewish settlers in the early days of the settlers’ movement in the West Bank. And like their brethren in the Middle East, the people here have a political agenda: Bio life. They are not connected to normal electricity, as each of them has a solar system supplying them with energy. No running water. And they grow some kind of trees. In addition, they do some sort of community culture. Today, for example, there’s a music show. When the show is over, what a surprise, the participants applaud.

Who are these creatures?

Franziska—or, for short, Franzi—is a tall blond with a constant smile. Her father, she tells me, is a philosopher and psychologist; her mother is in the pharmaceutical business. This woman doesn’t look poor. Yet, she has chosen to live rent-free.

Do you take a shower once in a while?

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“A pool not far from here.”

Anytime you need a shower you go the pool?

“People around here know me already. When they see me walking with a towel, they invite me in.”

How did you get here? I mean, could I also become a member and move in?

“I worked with this community and helped out for a year and a half before I moved in.”

Is there a social structure here, a kind of boss?

“The one who is here the longest is the one who has the last word if we can’t decide together.”

There you go. Another
Verein
.

She shows me to her home, a wooden structure on wheels. A warm place, nicely built. Did she build it herself? Yes. She’s an architect. She’s also a “Die Linke supporter.”

“I grew up to hate this country,” she tells me.

I meet one Die Linke after another.

Is this the same Germany as the one in the south?

Well, for one thing, they drink here more or less like the Bavarians. You can tell this by the quantity of empty beer bottles next to the caravans.

There are other similarities: The students I met in Munich wanted free higher education; these settlers here want free housing.

So far, what I know is this: Demand free housing and free education, drink cases of beer, be a member of some
Verein
, be PC, denounce Israel, eat Bio, be on time, love your neighbor’s iPad, scream “Deutschland!” or pull for North Korea, have no knowledge of what your family did during the war or call yourself Jewish, be very clean or very dirty, participate in one demonstration or another, discuss every detail of every issue until the other side gets a severe headache—and you are German.

Did I get it right? I don’t know. I have no time to think about it. Only minutes away is a soccer game between Germany and England and I’ve got to see it.

As the German team meets the English team on the field of the Fanmeile (a huge square) in Berlin, twenty million Germans are in attendance. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this number, but personally I have never seen so many people in my life standing in one place. Rossmarkt, by comparison, was a bus stop.

Just take a look at what happens here! As the German team scores 3–1, beer starts flowing skyward. The people are so excited that they irrigate the skies of Berlin with their beer. They jump, they sing, and they scream “Deutschland!” from the top of their lungs. Funny, in the midst of the twenty or fifty million Germans here I notice three Arabs standing just next to me. Like Muhammad and the mountain: If I don’t go to them, they come to me.

But they want to leave. “Halas,” they say to each other.

Halas? I ask.

“Halas,” they say. “We are going.”

Why?

“Germany is winning,” they say, utterly defeated.

They leave. And Deutschland scores another goal.

That’s it. The crowd is in heaven.

When the game is over, and all sing “Deutschland!” including yours truly, I make my way out. I try to follow the crowd. Not an easy task, since they go in different directions. I cross Yizhak-Rabin-Street—yes, there’s a street like this in Berlin, I am not kidding—through that famous DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE (for the German people) building. No, I am not lying, there’s a building like this here, it’s the Reichstag. And I make my way to the Central Station, Berlin.

I board a train and get off at Rosa-Luxemburg Platz. This weekenbd, you see, the Volksbühne Theater has a special event called “Idee des Kommunismus” (The idea of communism). And I, who have just been introduced to some Die Linke people, want to acquire a deeper understanding of them. Theater, when well done, has the capacity to explain to us what logic does not.

I am ready. Today’s Communist Conference theater performance is
Lehrstück
by Bertolt Brecht, directed by Frank Castorf. Gabriele told me that Castorf is the second-highest-paid director in the city; he must be good.

Play opens.

About twenty actors are in this production. All sing. Then all scream. When the effect of just screaming wears out and wears thin, actors break chairs and tear a pillow to pieces. When they’re done, a stuffed man is brought onto stage and two actors cut him with a knife and scream at him as well. If you’re a sadist, you’ll take great pleasure watching this theater. And nobody will know you’re a sadist, because this is culture. Great, right? Then, suddenly, coming totally from left field, an actress declares that she’s Jewish and starts talking in Hebrew, reciting a poem by H. N. Bialk.

How did we get into “Jews” again?

There’s no real beginning, middle, or end to this play. None of the actors have developed any kind of personality. All are members in good standing with the Screamers
Verein
. At one point I fall asleep but wake up when an actor comes over and actually wakes me up. Eyes open and ears alert, I see another actor who goes on reading, loudly, from books by Lenin.

Yes, of course. This play, after all, is part of the Communism Conference.

Does it really have to do anything with communism? No. With art? Not with that either. What is it, besides sadism? Go figure. There are some flashes of genius here, but they’re too few and too far between. Overall, it’s at best a children’s voiceover class. Its only achievement is the presentation of humans as brutal, idiotic, machinelike, and ugly. Was this the intention?

In the lobby of the theater, as you make your way in or out, you can pick up a free gift: a box of matches. On it is written, in big green letters, one word: castorf.

The man must think he’s a god.

I leave the theater more empty-hearted than when I entered. I walk, making my way down the streets of the former East Berlin. As I pace on the sidewalks I ponder questions of utmost importance to the future of Germany and me when my eyes catch two fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girls snapping pictures of one of the sidewalks.

You like sidewalks?

They point down at two small golden brass squares.

What’s that? I ask them. They point at the writing on the squares and say:

“These are the names of the Jews who used to live here before the war.”

Why are their names here?

“They don’t live here anymore.”

Why not?

“Because we killed them.”

I am stunned by this answer, at the simplicity of the way it’s phrased.

Did they ever meet a Jew personally?

“I know of one Jew,” says the girl on my right. “A friend of my mom is a Freemason and her boyfriend is a Jew.”

You sure?

“Yes. He goes to the church of the Jews.”

All the above is just too hard for me to digest and so I go to the Deutsches Currywurst Museum, to bite into something German.

Now, this is a museum. Real culture. Oh, what a museum! Here you can prepare a virtual Currywurst on your own. You can acquire knowledge here, no kidding: Cardamom, I learn, helps potency in men. Included in the entry price: half a portion of real Currywurst.

At the nearby Checkpoint Charlie, a fake soldier will issue for you a visa on a piece of paper and, for a few euros, even stamp it for you.

I hop on a train, out of Berlin.

Time to get in touch with the world outside Germany.

Here’s the Top News, brought to you by the BBC:

Turkey has barred an Israeli military flight from Turkish airspace, in apparent retaliation for Israel’s raid on an aid convoy bound for Gaza. The banned flight was carrying Israeli officers to Poland to tour Auschwitz.

Does any of this have to do anything with Germany? Not really. Or does it?

On to Dortmund. At a time when half of Germany is busy with Public Viewing, there’s an interesting artist in Dortmund who is busy with Public Thinking.