New Lives (86 page)

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ingo Schulze, born in Dresden in 1962, studied classical philology at the University of Jena. His first book,
33 Moments of Happiness,
won two German literary awards, the prestigious Alfred Döblin Prize, and the Ernst Willner Prize for Literature. In 2007 he was awarded both the Leipzig Book Fair Prize and the Thuringia Literature Prize. He is a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature. He lives in Berlin.

A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

John E. Woods is the distinguished translator of many books—most notably Arno Schmidt's
Evening Edged in Gold,
for which he won both the American Book Award for translation and the PEN Translation Prize in 1981; Patrick Süskind's
Perfume,
for which he again won the PEN Translation Prize in 1987; Christoph Ransmayr's
Terrors of Ice and Darkness, The Last World
(for which he was awarded the Schlegel-Tieck Prize in 1991), and
The Dog King;
Thomas Mann's
Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain
(for which, together with his translation of Arno Schmidt's
Nobodaddy's Children,
he was awarded the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize in 1996),
Doctor Faustus,
and
Joseph and His Brothers;
and Ingo Schulze's
33 Moments of Happiness
and
Simple Stories.
In 2008 he was awarded the Goethe Medallion of the Goethe Institut. He lives in Berlin.

ALSO BY INGO SCHULZE

33 Moments of Happiness

Simple Stories

FOOTNOTES

1. Two pages are missing; this page is numbered “3” at the top. It was possible to reconstruct the date.
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2. Enrico always called himself Heinrich when dealing with his sister.
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3. The nickname both brother and sister called their mother.
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4. There was no phone either in T.'s and Michaela's apartment or at his mother's home in Dresden. His mother could be reached only at Friedrichstadt Hospital, where she worked as a surgical nurse.
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5. T. had quit his job at the theater in early January.
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6. This same cryptic statement is repeated in later letters in different versions and in greater detail.
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7. Altenburg's hallmark. All that is left of the convent founded during the reign of Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa are two brick steeples that are said to symbolize the tips of the kaiser's red beard.
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8. Their original idea was for the paper to be the New Forum's weekly and for it to be financed by the Citizens' Movement.
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9.
Neues Deutschland.
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10. Václav Havel's first foreign trip as president of Czechoslovakia took him to the
GDR
, then to Munich.
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11. U.S. troops took over Panama on Dec. 24, 1989. President Noriega, a former
CIA
agent, sought asylum in the Vatican embassy, which he then left on Jan. 3, 1990. He was later tried on charges of drug smuggling.
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12. Gleina, south of Altenburg, had a large radar station for the National People's Army.
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13. Nicola Barakat, Vera Türmer's husband since January 1989, a Lebanese. He ran a fabric shop in West Berlin where V. T. worked part-time. Toward the end of 1989 he visited his mother in Beirut. He came up with the idea of reopening his parents' business in Beirut. V. T. followed him then in late January.
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14. T. apparently failed to realize that within the foreseeable future he would have to report on such events as this.
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15. Drunkard, “stewbum.”
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16. Colonel in the State Security, after 1966 head of “KoKo” (Commercial Coordination), which was supposed to keep the GDR solvent by means of covert business transactions.
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17. Soviet-German joint-stock company that mined uranium at various sites in Thuringia and Saxony.
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18. The only hotel in town at the time.
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19. The paper was set in linotype.
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20. T. had bet his mother that he would see Paris before his thirtieth birthday—information provided by Elisabeth Türmer.
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21. Jan Steen.
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22. He means his car, a Wartburg Deluxe.
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23. This letter presumes that some information about the trip to Offenburg, including T.'s impressions, had already been shared with his sister, evidently in phone calls from there.
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24. Skat and a factory for skat playing cards has been Altenburg's claim to fame. During this same period the Offenburg town hall was inundated with packages filled with decks of skat cards. The backs were often female nudes. Most senders wanted to establish contact with families in their new sister city.
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25. Figure in a Russian fairy tale in which the youngest, and presumed dumbest, carries the day.
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26. The newsletter of the Altenburg New Forum, published by Michaela Fürst. Its five issues were considered the precursor of the
Altenburg Weekly.
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27. Tiramisu.
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28. Until the end of 1989 Elisabeth Türmer had believed that, after V. T.'s departure for West Berlin in the summer of 1987, she had at last begun a career as an actor there.
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29. A coalition made up of the Christian Democratic Union, the German Social Union, and the “Democratic Awakening.”
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30. Herrmann Türmer died in 1968.
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31. There are just a few places where a strongly homoerotically tinged relationship between T. and Johann is suggested, and rarely is the implication as overt as it is here. Without knowledge of this fact, however, several passages would be incomprehensible.
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32. Candidate of the Socialist Unity Party.
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33. Between October 2nd and 8th there was a massive police deployment in Dresden. The initial cause was a fracas outside the Central Station, where trains carrying refugees from the German embassy in Prague had been passing through. Hundreds of people hoped to find a place on one of the trains. Cf. also the letter of May 25, '90.
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34. Hanns Eisler,
Johann Faustus
(Berlin, 1952).
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35. A standard procedure at the time, as the editor himself learned firsthand.
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36. As children the two had had a Hungarian street map of Paris that they had tried to learn by heart.—Information provided by V. T.
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37. Ernest Hemingway,
A Moveable Feast.
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38. Built in Budapest at the end of the nineteenth century, it offers a view of the Danube and of all of Pest across the river.
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39. Train station in Dresden.
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40. For T. plastic cups were the symbol of the official world, from kindergarten to the army—information provided by V. T.
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41. Quote from André Breton's
Nadja.
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42. Café in Dresden.
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43. Military abbreviations: Short Leave of two days; Extended Leave of three days.
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44. At the end of this volume of letters the reader may perhaps see the occasion differently.
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45. The E.T. in Spielberg's film of the same name becomes a lower-case Latin
et,
meaning “and.”
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46. Anna Seghers,
The Trial of Jeanne d'Arc in Rouen, 1431,
radio play (Leipzig, 1975); T. evidently means still photographs included in the book and taken from the silent film
La passion de Jeanne d'Arc
(1928), directed by C. T. Dreyer.
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47. Sweater vest.
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48. The dating of this letter is problematic. There is hardly any way to make the details dovetail. T. is evidently mistaken about the date. “The day before yesterday” was Sunday, that is the same day on which they worked late into the night. An earlier date is likewise hardly possible. And yet discrepancies also arise for Wednesday and Thursday. The most probable time for the letter to have been written is Thursday morning, although it seems odd that there is no mention of the day on which the first issue was published.
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49. Volkspolizei, the People's Police.
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50. Presumably he means on Tuesday of the previous week.
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51.
Leipziger Volkszeitung
[Leipzig National Newspaper].
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52. Martin Luther Church is at the opposite end of Market Square, a distance of about eight hundred feet.
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53. Two new residential developments, one with fifteen, the other with five thousand inhabitants.
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54. They had been preparing the second issue.
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55. T. wrote the majority of his letters, especially those to N. H., between five and nine a.m.
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56. The first two paragraphs of this letter reflect contradictory intentions. On the one hand T. describes letter writing as a pastime; on the other, the idea that he “has” to say something suggests that he regards it as his duty to report about his work. This ambivalence, despite whatever embellishments accompany it, is always present.
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57. One month previous, on Jan. 18th, T. had written that he owed his job at the paper to the “Prophet,” Rudolf Franck. “He initiated things and put in a good word for me.”
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58. The launching celebration was held on Feb. 2nd, the first day of sales.
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59. As a photographer Nicoletta Hansen had accompanied a journalist who was doing a story about the countless number of newly founded newspapers, especially in Thuringia and Saxony. When the article finally appeared there was no mention of the
Altenburg Weekly.
T. had asked the reporter for N. H.'s address.
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60. Apparently this was a bilingual edition of Apuleius's
Cupid and Psyche
(Leipzig, 1981), in which there were color photographs of the nine frescoes executed in 1838 by Moritz von Schwind for the music pavilion in Rüdigsdorf near Kohren-Sahlis.
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61. These additional plans evidently led nowhere.
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62. A specialty in Altenburg and Schmölln: pork roast (either rib or shoulder) marinated in marjoram and roasted on a spit over a birchwood fire.
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63.
Large Neeberg Figure,
by Wieland Förster.
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64. This is the first time that T. describes himself, however indirectly, as an artist/writer.
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65. Strangely enough, T. has chosen the least appropriate place here for his confessions, since he is advocating much the same thing as the lowbrow that he just threw out of the office a few hours before.
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66. This passage sounds the central motif of his letters to N. H. for the first time.
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67. If one applies this mode of thought to T. himself, one might well conclude that he has found a strong “drug” for himself.
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68. Despite various attempts to learn the nature of these accusations and what had preceded them, I am still in the dark as to the meaning of this passage.
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69. The piles of tailings at the Wismut mine.
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70.
Miss Julie,
by August Strindberg.
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71. Franz Flieder, director.
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72. General manager.
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73. The first performance of the remounted production took place on Sunday, March 4th.
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74. All quotes agree verbatim with the text, which may indicate that T. had a copy in front of him when writing this letter.
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75. At the time Johannes Rau was the prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, had been nominated as the Social Democratic candidate for chancellor in 1986, and was later elected president of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2000–2004.
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76. A local term for musical chairs.
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77. Clemens von Barrista,
Living Money—Lebendes Geld
(Heidelberg, 1987).
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78. Most of Goethe's and Schiller's ballads were written in 1797; it was also the year in which Hölderlin's
Hyperion
was published.
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79. T.'s nickname for Barrista, taken from his “big black American cruiser,” a “LeBaron.”
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80. Crossed out: “without having first washed her hands,”
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81. Presumably T. means mousse and grappa.
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82. In order to protect the rights of privacy, no details can be provided.
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83. The proof room at the printing shop of the
Leipziger Volkszeitung,
where the
Altenburg Weekly
was read for corrections every Wednesday.
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84. Cf. the letters that follow.
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85. The question as to what extent these “susurrations” (cf. below) had anything to do with T.'s real experience is something each reader will have to decide for him-or herself over time. Quite obviously he is searching here for some reason to be writing these letters. A rather poor motivation.
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86. T. apparently expected that N. H. had written him before she even left Altenburg. The accident had happened only two days before.
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87. Here T. addresses the central theme of his letters to N. H.
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88.
Willi Schwabe's Attic
—an East German television program. At the beginning of each episode Willi Schwabe, with lantern in hand, would climb the stairs to a kind of storage room. The background music was the “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy” from Tchaikovsky's
Nutcracker.
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89. At the start of the second part of the letter it was still evening. Either T. had slept in the meantime or—though it is hardly likely—it had taken him all night to write it.
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90. Refers to a phone call that evidently came earlier than had been agreed on. T.'s letters to V. T. never made it to Beirut. Thus the only ones that still exist are those that T. made a carbon copy of, plus two faxed letters.
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91. Cf. footnote 2, The Letters of Enrico Türmer.
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92. He means the “ice crystals” of the shattered windshield.
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93. This surely must either be a wish or a fond hope. It is quite unclear what T. meant by this. There is no record of anything by N. H. ever being published in the
Altenburg Weekly.
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