I have been in Berlin again, and this time it was even far more exciting than ever. I met a lot of new people through my correspondence and huge coincidences - which only seem to happen in Berlin, not in my mundane existence in Soho!
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Perhaps the most delightful and extraordinary was my meeting with an enchanting authoress, Jenny Erpenbeck. It was arranged by a mutual friend, whom I had completely lost touch with, Cornelia Laufer, at a luxurious picnic in the courtyard of an old apartment house in the East End of Berlin, where she shares studios with two other artists... The wife of a friend of mine, Zhou Rooney, a Chinese medical practitioner, had spoken about my Wannsee lake story of my father's sailing partner Adolf Hain - turned rabid top nazi Bonze, boss of the Verein Seglerhaus am Wannsee (VSaW) sailing club, and of the entire sailing scene around Berlin, who ousted the club’s Jewish members in quick time - to a German patient of hers, Nicola Ebert. Nicola Ebert decided, out of the blue, to send me a novel, actually highly autobiographical, by Jenny Erpenbeck, about the fate of the variously changing occupants of a house on another lake near Berlin, which vividly and dramatically mirrored the nazi, communist and democratic periods. Nicola had moved to Berlin, and invited me for supper, where I met her husband and 3 children and re-met Cornelia Laufer, who knows Jenny Erpenbeck because both their small children go to the same school... Jenny is hoping to write a best-seller, so that she can buy back the house, which had belonged to her grandparents, and so to invite me there!
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Meeting Two. Christmas in Berlin I discovered, in the lovely Berlin shop on the Unter den Linden, a miniature dictionary, the size of a large postage stamp, by the famous Berlin dictionary publishers Langenscheidt - also once members of my father's sailing club! - about the Berlin Jargon. I was amazed that it should have dictionary status! I immediately went to my favourite bookshop Dussmann, Friedrichstrasse, and found a number of slim books on the lingo, and in one of them I discovered that I didnt speak proper German, Hochdeutsch, but that I spoke Berlinsch! I was delighted! I had the true imprint of the Berliner. I'd asked my best friend in Berlin, Pitt, last year why he pronounced the German for cheese, Kaese, with a deep 'a', as in 'mad', and I, on the other hand, ate cheese with the vowel like the English 'day', Kese. He didnt know. And what it is is that he speaks proper German, which always struck me as theatre language, and rather too posh! Well, I wrote to the author, Jan Eik, who was delighted at some of the examples I gave him of the expressions and pronunciations from my childhood, from my parents, and he invited me for a tour of East Berlin - he comes from the Eastern section - and then he invited me to his wooden country cottage just outside Berlin, where I met his wife Angelika and daughter Lilly, and we all went to one of the nearby lakes and swam there in the nude! Last week they happened to be coming to London, and I served tea, Mille Feuilles and Eclairs from Cafe Valerie. This time it was with their grand- daughter, another Lilly...
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Meeting Three. We scattered Berliners get a magazine from the Buergermeister of Berlin 4 times a year, and the editress, Heike Kroeger, has from time to time published things of mine, e g a shortened version of the story of my father's nazi sailing partner Adolf Hain and, recently, the tale of my discovery that I speak Berlinsch. That article led to 12 aged Berliners from all over the world and London, ringing me, writing to me, emailing me, meeting me, one in London, one from America in Berlin, thrilled at the reminder of their origins, their childhood, their Berlin, full of nostalgia... Of course I informed Heike Kroeger of these reactions which, as editress, of course thrilled her, and she invited me for lunch at one of the two swish tennis clubs in Berlin. I wondered which one it would be, the Blau-Weiss or the Rot-Weiss, because... It turned out to be the Blau-Weiss, where her young daughter plays hockey, so that she is allowed to use the restaurant! She isnt allowed to use the swimming pool, that costs extra... In the restaurant, on the terrace, I asked to see Herr Thomas Floeter, the Gastronom, and we spoke about his one-time pupil, my friend Kai Maurer in Tunbridge Wells, who pilots a gyroplane, a mini autogiro, and teaches pilots to fly them, and had come to Berlin for specialist lessons in some manoeuvring techniques not taught in the UK, and his teacher was Herr Floeter, gyroplane pilot trainer - and manager of the restaurant of the Blau-Weiss Tennis Club!
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Meeting Four. I get another magazine from Berlin, by a research institution, Aktive Museum, that delves into the nazi past, and seeks to recognise and honour its victims. There was a long article in it about an island in the Wannsee. Schwanenwerder. An island in the Wannsee? And I thought I knew the Wannsee. I'd never heard of an island. I didnt realise that that bit of coast on the right, as you leave the lake to go along the Havel river, just past the bathing beach, was an island... I learnt that it had been occupied by extremely wealthy, successful, mainly Jewish, store owners, bankers and other business families, until they were dispersed, and Goebbels and other top nazis took over the various properties, and closed the bridge to the general public. Hitler came for coffee, but never lived there, though his officials had planned his stay there. I sent the writer, Christine Fischer-Defoy, a copy of my Wannsee Nazi story, and through this dialogue she suggested that we should have a tour of the short circular road round the island, and study the various houses and their stories. This turned into what I called a school outing, and we were 12 making the tour. There were various officials from the research organisation; there was the director of the Wannsee Konferenz, the house by the Wannsee where the nazis had their conference for the final destruction of the Jews, now a research centre; there was a resident, who lived on the island; and there was me. After the tour a few of us went to one of the sailing clubs by the entrance to the island, by the bridge, and had lunch together out in the open, with a view of the sunny Wannsee and white sails passing. The intention, with the agreement of the present residents, is to erect some form of tablet in front of each house, telling the stories of its changing inhabitants.
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In Brecht's Berliner Ensemble's theatre, the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, the canteen is used by performers and audiences alike, which is a delight. After the show there one night a year or two back two men joined my long table and we got talking. I must have somehow mentioned that I was taken to the original production of the Weisse Roessl, the White Horse Inn, in 1928, and one of the men, Hartmut Schulz, said, I think I have a spare copy of the programme of that production, I'll send it to you. And he did. And we have become friends. He books seats for us in the BE on the day booking opens, cheaper for pensioners! At Christmas I met a woman friend of Hartmut's, Gudrun Blankenburg, a guide specialising in Berlin's past. We three met in a cafe opposite the first flat that I remember living in, at Hauptstrasse 76, in Friedenau. Waiting in front of the locked street door we got talking to a resident leaving the property, and so we could go upstairs, and I looked through the letter box, and saw my parents' bedroom at the end of the corridor, with my room on the right. The flat was empty. Gudrun took some pictures of me looking up at the balcony (for the next edition of her book on Friedenau) which overlooks Stierstrasse, where our Muckepicke used to stand: My father ran this Opel 'Mini', with which we’d drive up the new Avus motorway and race track to Wannsee, where he shared this sizeable sailing yacht, the fastest of the period as I learnt, with his ‘friend’ Adolf Hain. This summer Hartmut and I again met Gudrun, who took us to the playground of the Loecknitz Primary School in the Bayerische Viertel, where she lives, and showed us a memorial wall, some 20 meters long and 1 ½ meters high. It consists of yellow bricks - 800 of them! - each brick inscribed by a pupil of the senior class of every year since 1994, who had researched a Jewish resident of the district, murdered by the Nazi regime, and recorded on it their name, dates and fate. At the end of the wall were stacked up the bricks of the present senior class, waiting to be incorporated in the wall. The school stands where previously had stood the local synagogue. Gudrun has asked me to nominate all the 800 pupils for a prize of conciliation, awarded annually by the American Obermayer German Jewish History Awards. They deserve it!
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I also conferred with the historian of the VSaW Peter Rieck, over a ‘Berliner Weisse mit, rot’ on the terrace of the sailing club, about the complex history of the club, a sanitized version of which he has written for the forthcoming ‘Festschrift’ to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the clubhouse. I’m getting a copy. Frank Butzmann, the secretary of the club, told me that all members got a copy, automatically. I said, but I am not a member, I only act as if I were...
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Coming out of my room in the Pension Waizenegger – it is the larder of the old flat in this beautiful yellow Jugendstil house, with its ornamental courtyard and art deco detail – I found Vitali Zilbercher talking to a man, who turned out to be Ralph Stolle, who was directing a film about the Mommsenstrasse Kietz, my neighbourhood. He asked me to participate in it. I star yet again!!! To be shown on the RBB Channel on 14 August 2010 at 1900 hours.
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In my profound concern over the threat that the concert hall of Les Arts Gstaad, the proposed Arts Centre in Gstaad, Switzerland, with which I have been involved for 20 years, may be built without an orchestra pit - an idiocy, as they plan to include performances of ballet, opera and drama on the stage! - I had written to a member of the project's Committee of Patrons, Herr Prof. Dr. Joachim Sartorius, Intendant of the Berliner Festspiele. He is in charge of the dramatic, musical and arts events of the Berlin Festivals. At my suggestion he had written to my friend Markus Kappeler, boss of the Gstaad project, completely backing my recommendation for the inclusion of an orchestra pit in the scheme. He deals with many theatres and halls in Berlin, and stated that all of them have orchestra pits, and that two of them are actually enlarging their orchestra pits, the Volksbuehne and the Schiller Theater. He had received only a completely non-committal and inconclusive reply from Herr Markus J Kappeler!
I went to have a cup of coffee with him in his office before he went on his summer leave. He is hoping to arrange for a meeting in Gstaad of the Committee of Patrons, so that they can put their views forward, and get involved in the decision making, and see to it that Gstaad gets its orchestra pit.
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And I met up with nearly all my old friends; I had two lovely meals with them on the sailing club terrace; in his lovely new flat Gerhard Kastner played for me, a beautiful new work of his for harpsichord, some Bach, and some magical Mozart when he was 6; I went to art exhibition, theatre and opera - a dreadful Fidelio production at the Komische Oper, sheer magic musically; Otello at the Deutsche Oper, with the chorus all lying in 100 bunks 10 stories high round the stage; I heard the Berliner Philharmoniker in the Waldbuehne give a popular concert in this huge amphitheatre, a Volksfest with interval picnics and comedy, with the orchestra standing up before the concert, echoed by the audience standing up, then the orchestra up again... And of course I popped into the KaDeWe, and had refreshment in the rooftop glass conservatory restaurant. My satellite life...
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C Peter Zander 11 August 2010
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