Unity (20 page)
Authors: Michael Arditti
Like a child, Wolfram acknowledged no boundaries between the world and his desires, only challenges. As his fame grew, he
abandoned
any kind of self-control (at the same time, his control over his films grew ever tighter). He failed to realise that the ability to gratify his desires was not freedom as long as he remained a slave to those desires. He aped the behaviour of a rock star, once ordering a bottle of champagne in a restaurant not to quench his thirst but because he wanted to cool his feet in the ice-bucket. He left a trail of trashed hotel rooms, the managers sending
incriminatory
photographs to the Studios, who paid handsomely to have the negatives destroyed. He lived on a cocktail of drugs that
stimulated
his output but ruined his health. At the end of every crisis, he would give his solemn word to Werner that he would clean up his behaviour. Meanwhile, he had found the perfect way to feed his habit in public. With a patent-worthy perversity, he doctored a nasal inhaler so that, when pressed, it released a line of cocaine.
Wolfram's sexual habits were equally extreme. He was
predominantly
homosexual, although he evinced a deep-rooted contempt for the aunties and old queens.
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In every relationship, he was the aggressor, and he preferred to work out his aggression on straight men: black men: working-class men â and, on occasions, women. While emotionally he always remained at a distance, physically he reached ever deeper, substituting penetration for intimacy. He made no apologies for his inclinations. Far from regarding them as
unnatural, he felt that, by sleeping with a man, he was reaching to the heart of Nature, embracing it in all its dark impersonality rather than dressing it in the sentimentality of a bourgeois code.
The constant craving for novelty that served him so well in his work ensured that, by the end of his life, sex had become
scatology
. He wanted to sanctify wastes: the bodily fluids and,
sometimes
, solids of which we had been taught to be most ashamed. He felt that, if we made love to someone, then we should do so at the moment of our greatest vulnerability. By then, he admitted no distinction between public and private lives. He drew his insights from the bunker and the board room and adapted them to the bedroom. People were animals and so that was how he made them behave between the sheets. He took the history of the past fifty years and repeated it, not as tragedy or farce, but as pornography.
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His character was not so much a mystery as a paradox. Just as it was the commercial success of his films that allowed him the freedom to denounce capitalist values, so he coupled his critique of American culture with films that mimicked the style, structure and, sometimes, even the plots of Hollywood melodramas. He was steeped in the Studio system, relating every dilemma facing himself or his associates to one resolved by Glenn Ford or Barbara Stanwyck. Indeed, his main reason for wishing to turn his actors into stars was that Hollywood was his Valhalla.
He dominated us without effort. The author herself was his abject slave. It was as if the word
no
had been excised from my vocabulary or else that I had renounced it voluntarily, like
dwarf
. He cast me as a lesbian, a murderess and a tramp. I look at pictures of myself taken twenty years ago and I see a beautiful woman, but he made me feel so undesirable that I could justify
my existence only when reflected through his lens. The one remotely glamorous role in which he cast me was the Virgin Mary in
Faust
and, even then, the choice was not innocent, since he knew that nothing would more outrage my father, a Lutheran pastor, than the scene in which I offered the hero my nipple and the screen was flooded with milk.
My longing for him came at the expense of all self-respect. The familiar story that I paid for his whores is, I regret, true. What is less well-known is how I did so. It was not with money stolen from my father's collection-box, however much that might have appealed to his taste for sacrilege, but rather with my body. I
prostituted
myself in order to provide him with prostitutes. My
degradation
was the price of his pleasure.
Whether as a reward or a punishment, he married me. It was at once the happiest and the most desperate day of my life. On the steps of the town hall, he began to flirt with one of the secretaries. He skipped the wedding meal for an assignation with her. It had to be a
her
: a
him
would have been both too easy a challenge for Wolfram, and too small a humiliation for me. He later claimed in an interview that he had married so that he could be like any other German husband and abuse his wife. I alone could unpeel the layers of irony behind that remark. There is one way in which he continues to act as a warning. The further that we move from the Nazi era, the stranger it seems that so many ordinary, decent people should have surrendered their will to a single man. But anyone struggling to make sense of that headlong stampede into insanity need only speak to Dieter Reiss or Dorit Huber, to Liesl Martins or Manfred Stückl, to Luise Hermann or Helmuth
Wissmann
, or, for the most authoritative account of all, to me.
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Walter Ulbricht (1893â1973), Secretary-General of the East German Communist Party.
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It would have had to be a very free recreation. On the face of it, few actresses could have been less suited to playing the âLittle Sparrow' than the hefty, big-boned Fischer.
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It is curious that there is no mention of any such incident in Geraldine Mortimer's journal.
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Renate Fischer's memoir was written in 1995.
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It is unclear whether Fischer is referring to dictatorship in the film or on the set or, indeed, if the ambiguity is intentional.
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Martins and Stückl later adopted two Vietnamese orphans, Anh Dung and Tuyen.
93
This is an approximate translation of two pejorative German terms:
Tunten
and
Schwuchteln
.
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It is instructive to note the difference between Meier's view and that of Dieter Reiss, as recorded by Geraldine Mortimer on page 292. Whereas Meier wanted the bedroom to reflect the world, Reiss wanted it to redeem it.
Â
Â
Renate Fischer's generosity in placing her memoir at my disposal was offset by a refusal to meet me face to face. My attempts to make contact with other of Meier's associates drew a similar blank. Following the director's death, the close-knit group had unravelled and long-standing friendships dissolved in acrimony. Dieter Reiss alone responded to my request, summoning me to his hospital bed in Munich, but the ravages of illness made sustained questioning impossible. So I was especially glad to meet Liesl Martins when she visited London in September 2001 to launch a season of Meier's work at the National Film Theatre. Meier's films had fallen from favour in the 1990s, their density of thought and texture out of place in a culture of sensationalism. Their renewed popularity is due in part to the change in climate and in part to the tireless promotion of the Meier Foundation, which Martins heads.
We had in fact met once before, when Meier was on location in England. Then, despite our both being visitors to the set, she had barely deigned to acknowledge me â a slight which, in my depressed state, I had taken as my due. I now felt able to address her on an equal footing â although her open indifference to fiction threatened to sap my confidence. While wary of any rehash of the Unity debacle, she soon appreciated the seriousness of my approach and promised me every assistance. In March 2002, I flew to Munich for a private screening of the surviving Unity footage which, owing to protracted legal disputes, is kept locked in the vaults. On the evening of 2 March, I visited Martins and her husband, Manfred Stückl, in their house on the outskirts of the city. Conversation was subject to various distractions (not least the excellent dinner) and became at times hard to follow. While their memory of events that took place twenty-five years earlier
remained excellent, their grasp of English was erratic.
Nevertheless
, I trust that this transcript does justice to their views while giving further insight into Felicity's motives.
Martins and Stückl provided an unexpected perspective on the filming. In common with other contributors, they showed so little interest in Luke that I was forced to query my own belief that it was breaking up with him that had upset the balance of Felicity's mind. In contrast to Fischer, they downplayed the role of Felicity's passion for Meier (what will not be apparent from the transcript is the derisory laughter that greeted my mere mention of the subject). They chose to concentrate instead on England in both their account of the film and their analysis of Felicity's behaviour. At first, I attributed this to a misguided sense of patriotism but then I realised that, given my own emphasis on psychological influences, I would be wrong to portray Felicity as though she had sprung up fully formed in Munich â or even in Cambridge â but needed to follow her back to her childhood home.
Felicity liked to portray herself as having made a heroic attempt to escape the clutches of her family â and my own brief
acquaintance
with them led me to endorse her resolve. The Benthalls combined the worst characteristics both of their tribe and their nation. Their arrogance and insularity would have made the
Hapsburgs
blush. Stückl expressed surprise at the housekeeper who had visited London only once. Her employers may have been more seasoned travellers, but their horizons were equally
circumscribed
. A few years ago, I found myself opposite Frieda Benthall at a wedding. She affected not to know me, but the tactic was
transparent
. I determined to be conciliatory and curb my lingering resentment that neither I nor any of her friends had been invited to Felicity's funeral. âWhat are you doing now?' she asked. âWriting novels,' I said. âOh, I never read novels,' she replied, âthey're too full of ideas and none of them are one's own.' It's no wonder that
Felicity disowned her, although the damage may already have been done.
The switch in focus to England marked a shift in my
investigation
from Felicity herself to the forces she represented. When Luke, in a rare mention of the Schleyer kidnap, wrote that he feared a resurgence of fascism, he identified it exclusively with the Right. In strict historical terms he may have been correct, but my concern is with the broader fascist temperament â that total conviction in the supremacy of one's cause and the legitimate use of violence to promote it, which unites extremists at both ends of the political scale.
In Felicity's case, I trace the rot to the heart of her family. Meier employed the Benthalls' house to serve for the Mitfords', but he missed his chance by failing to employ its occupants. With his carefully cultivated eccentricities, Peregrine Benthall would have been perfect casting as Lord Redesdale, although his opinions on the Jews â or rather âthe Chosen People' â were far more
pernicious
than any attributed to Unity's father. Besides, while I would never equate social exclusion with mass murder, the existence of societies such as the White Knights of Britain, to which Felicity's neighbour belonged, bears witness to the deep strain of anti-
Semitism
that runs through English national life. Felicity may have been right to identify an element of role-play in the group (although the same might be said of the SS), but her readiness to dismiss them as harmless buffoons suggests that she retained a dangerous affection for the world of her childhood. The degree to which that world informed her views is open to question, but it can be no coincidence that, for all their ideological polarity, the Far Right in the 1930s and the Far Left in the 1970s both chose to target the Jews.
Meier, according to Martins, judged British integrity to be an
illusion
and, on the evidence set down here, it would be hard to
disagree. Hitler, who was nothing if not an astute politician, regarded Britain and Germany as natural allies. His interest in Unity Mitford was triggered not merely by her Aryan looks and aristocratic background but by her descent from the first Lord Redesdale, whose preface to Houston Chamberlain's
The
Foundations
of the Nineteenth Century,
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one of the bibles of Nazism, identified him â and her â as a friend to the fascist cause. It is surely not fanciful to detect a similar identification of British and German interests in Felicity's activities in Munich forty years on.
I'd like to start by asking you to summarise your first impressions of Wolfram Meier.
M.S. Young.
L.M. Sexy.
M.S. Dirty.
L.M. Confident.
M.S. Thin.
L.M. Thin.
M.S. Mean.
You can use more than one word if you like. This isn't a
psychological
test.
L.M. That is the problem. With Wolfram, it must either be one word or a whole book. We met him in the summer of 1965.
M.S. Since then so much water has flown down the Rhine. We were rehearsing for the
King Ubu
. There was already a big scandal about the pigs.
L.M. People thought we would have an orgy: actors and pigs.
Really
?
L.M. We said âWhere is the problem? For you, we are all pigs anyway.'
M.S. Liesl was to ride on one naked.
L.M. My God, I was young!
And you
?
L.M. Manfred kept his â how do you say in English? â his sceptre wrapped in.
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M.S. Before we opened, we sold all of the seats.
L.M. Most of them to the police.
M.S. We started the group half a year before. Liesl, Klaus and I. Klaus Bernheim. Now he is a Green MP in Strasbourg.
L.M. He changed colours quicker than a traffic light.
M.S. Liesl â¦
L.M. We found an unused pub. We took chairs from an old church. One girl of our group, her father was a pastor.
Would that be Renate Fischer?
L.M. You know Renate?
She's mentioned in Luke's letters.
L.M. She is a sad case. We will not speak of her.
M.S. We put on our plays. We found our audience. We fulfilled our dream of theatre. And then we learnt that, under Hitler, the building where we played was used as a prison. We thought we were safe from history. We thought we knew what roads we must not walk down â what buildings we must not walk into. But we were wrong. We laughed where they screamed. We had a meeting.
L.M. We had always meetings.
M.S. Then suddenly no more meetings. The building burned down.
Was that when you met Wolfram Meier?
M.S. Not at all. We are losing the line. He came when we rehearsed the King Ubu. With the pigs.
L.M. And the smell. There was such a smell. Some of our group said âNo more!' Renate, Little Miss Pastor's Daughter.
She walked away?
L.M. But she walked back.
M.S. Then one day Freddi, who did our lighting, brought Wolfram. He was, as we say, a cousin around a thousand corners.
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And, while everyone else protested about the smell, he loved it. He said that it was the smell of art.
L.M. He looked so strange with his white hairs and his
pickle-face
.
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And he was very thin. Still his shirts were too small. There was always a button burst and a patch â like a diamond â of skin. It made every woman want to be a mother to him.
M.S. That was not the word you used at the time. You said eat him.
L.M. Eat? Mother? It is the same.
M.S. We gave him the job of looking after the pigs. He was so good that we believed he grew up on a farm. But we were wrong. He hated the country. Many years later, when we were in England and filmed in the house of your friend, we sniffed the air. The rich air. The rich man's air. One day, we found Wolfram behind the generators, sniffing the fumes. â
Was machst du
?' I asked. âI cannot breathe,' he said. âI must have the city to survive.'
Was he serious or was he simply out to shock?
M.S. With Wolfram, it was the similar thing.
L.M.
King Ubu
went. The pigs went. Wolfram stayed.
M.S. No one spoke of it. But at the next meeting â
L.M. We had always meetings.
M.S. He was there and held up his hands with the rest of us. From then he was a part of us. At first, he helped behind the stage. And, later, he began to play.
L.M. His playing was like no one else. He had no shame.
M.S. He lived with us â in the house of Liesl â for two years.
L.M. Many people did it. I had the house. They had to sleep. It was normal.
M.S. Wolfram was different. Remember that it was 1966 ⦠1967. Everyone said goodbye to private property; Wolfram believed it. Even the beds. You came home in the middle of the night and found him asleep in your bed. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with other persons.
L.M. Sometimes with you.
M.S. And the smell. It was clear why he was happy with the pigs.
L.M. And it wasn't Manfred who washed his dirty clothes.
M.S. But it was Manfred who pulled them from his back. He cried out like a little child: âBut I like my smell.'
In a way, there's something admirable about that. We're all so hung up on hygiene. At times I think that I'd feel less
uncomfortable
leaving the house naked than leaving it without a deodorant.
M.S. I gave him his first chance to direct. Sometimes I think this will be all that remains from me.
L.M. Nonsense, darling. You made so many films. Now you help other people to make films.
M.S. Yes, but none of them gives me goose-skin. I sit in my office all day and meet with directors. And, every time, I hope to find a new Wolfram: someone who makes me see the world with fresh eyes.
What was this play that he directed?
M.S. He said that it was written by a friend, a young man who just came out of prison. It was full of drugs and violence and sex and criminals. It was like jazz.
L.M. But there was no music.
M.S. Some of the group did not want it. They said that it was romantic and distracting. But I disagreed. I called a meeting for when I knew that these persons were out of the town.
L.M. We have a phrase: when the cat's away, the mice will dance on the table.
M.S. And we won enough voices. I was excited. I saw the truth of the writing. I say this against me but also in admiration of Wolfram because, as you perhaps guess, the play was written by him. And, two years later, it was the model for his first film,
Der Rattenfanger.
L.M. Which we just released in a new copy that was shown world-wide.
And how did the film come about? Was there a prototype Manfred Stückl doling out money to young film directors in the late sixties?
M.S. What happened was most extraordinary â
L.M. Let me tell it, darling. You make it too mysterious. It was really very simple. We told you that the theatre burned down. Thanks to good luck â
M.S. And to Liesl.
L.M. We had an insurance. We could have put the money into another theatre but we decided that after three terrifying years.
M.S. I think you mean terrific.
L.M. Terrific, naturally. You must excuse my English. After three terrific years, it was time to move forwards. Wolfram asked us to put the money into his film. We did it. And, from then on, everybody knows the story.
Is it quite that straightforward? I hope that you won't take offence but, as I'm sure you're aware, Renate Fischer tells it rather
differently
.
L.M. Renate Fischer is a liar! What do you really want? You tell us that you must find out the truth about your friend. You send us your books and say that you are an author. But you are not. You are a journalist!