Not I (26 page)

Father Johannes Wittenbrink, a neighbor and friend of the family, in a photo taken in the 1950s

Around this time, I decided on my future profession. In Greek class Dr. Breitscheid was reading out a poem written in a classical style. Its title, as far as I remember, was “The Tears of Nausicaä” or something like it. The author’s name was Eckart Peterich, added our teacher, and the poem described a maiden gazing after a longed-for or vanished happiness. When I asked what kind of poet Peterich was, Dr. Breitscheid talked about Peterich’s publications, his origin in a German-Italian family of scholars in Florence, and his marriage into a wealthy patrician family, so that he was able to live in aristocratic circumstances. All of these factors permitted him to lead a life as—yes, as what (he said, looking for the right word), well, let’s say, as an independent scholar.
¹⁷
The term, mentioned in passing, was like an inspiration to me: Florence, the wealthy lifestyle, and the propertied patrician wife included, of course. Apart from that my second thought was that as an “independent scholar” I would evade, as my father put it, the wretched impertinences of the Nazis, and so freely dispose of myself and the objects of my interest, as no university teacher far and wide was able to do. My preferences were anyway all for the remoter past, whether Athens or Florence. As my
mother often reminded me with amusement years later, I wrote to my parents on November 22, 1941, in a flush of clever Dick excitement:
I have a profession
.

In a lifetime one probably never again reads as one does between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. The feeling was intensified by the circumstances of the war, which ate into our minds and made us fear we might miss one of the important works. This fear was even more marked when it came to music. Whenever I played with the crystal radio set which Wigbert Gans had given me on my last Berlin visit, I heard through all of the abrupt whistling and intermittent interruptions a basso continuo, which told me that this very performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with Edwin Fischer or that Haydn symphony conducted by Eugen Jochum might be the only or indeed the last chance to become familiar with these works.

The feeling was so powerful that I passed hours turning the dial of the set without picking up more than a few distorted bars of a never-to-be-identified piece of music or spent my time over books of which in less threatening times I would have read at most a couple of dozen pages. Since I read mostly after lights out under the blanket in the bright cone of a pocket lamp, I had for the time being to do without Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
and
The Idiot
, which Wolfgang had brought from Berlin. Both were too heavy and bulky. More for lack of anything else I then turned to Robert Graves’s great book
I, Claudius
, and after so many detours at last once again read a book that not only had one of my favorite themes as its subject,
but was also a work of literary stature, which combined linguistic sparkle, excitement, and instruction.

My problems with the boarding-school regulations continued throughout the first year, and forever led to ever new, sometimes absurdly difficult situations. I never found out how my two brothers coped with it—and Wolfgang even seemed to take liberties without suffering any consequences. He was soon giving talks to the top three classes on “Goethe’s
Faust
in the Light of Modern Experience,” as I remember one title, as well as “The Romanticism of Sturm und Drang” and “The Battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268,” where the power of the Hohenstaufen imperial dynasty came to an end. Once, when Dr. Hermann tried to turn Wolfgang against me with remarks of feigned concern for me, boarding-school rumor had it that he had refused to listen, and had expressed himself in his “impertinent Berlin accent.” He wouldn’t tell me anything more. “It was nothing!” was all he said. “There’s been worse!”

During the winter I went to the theater several times, but not until spring did I get to the opera. On the program was Wagner’s
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
under Bruno Vondenhoff, who conducted the municipal orchestra. The production conveyed to me the engaging and often rousing side of Wagner. At the same time, stimulated by conversations and reflection, I discovered in it—in addition to medievalizing Old Nürnberg romanticism—a lot of Neuschwanstein and pretentious, pasteboard scenery. Nevertheless, what was, on the whole, a strong impression was blurred by my return to the
boarding school. Since, out of some crazy adolescent boy’s pride, I didn’t want to request special permission to be out late, I had asked Winfried to arrange my bed for the usually cursory evening inspection, so that it looked as if it was occupied. The greater difficulty was climbing over the high metal fence around the school and then getting past the porter’s lodge. But everything went without a hitch, so that soon after, at the invitation of a grammar-school friend, I undertook my second opera excursion.

The friend’s name was Willibald and his father was a respected publisher in Freiburg; the latter had suddenly and unexpectedly been prevented from going to the opera that evening. I would most like to have seen one of the Mozart operas I knew, but the performance was
Beethoven’s
Fidelio
. When, shortly beforehand, Father Wittenbrink called me by chance to answer one of the “interrogatory letters” with which I tried to continue our Berlin conversations, he was as if electrified by the news of my opera invitation. “
Fidelio!
” he exclaimed, and there followed a jumble of words. He talked about parts, climaxes, the finale, and in between always something like, “The conclusion: pay attention to it! That’s when the signal comes!” Then he lapsed once more into confused enthusiasm until I understood nothing more of the story. After a question which, though esoteric, seemed quite comprehensible amid his flood of words, he urged me to read the libretto.

Last photograph of the family together before the three sons left for the boarding school in Freiburg in 1941
. Back row from left:
Winfried, Hannih, Wolfgang, the author;
front row:
their mother Elisabeth, Christa, and their father

I found it quite an effort to read the text and I told my friend that it was a shame Schiller hadn’t written the libretto to
Fidelio
, but (as I had read) an unknown Frenchman and somebody else. On the evening before the performance, Wittenbrink called again and urged me, even if this time in a more controlled voice, “Watch out for the trumpet! That’s what I wanted to tell you. That’s the signal! The trumpet is everything!” And so on, for a while, till at the end, throwing all political caution to the winds, he added, “The belief in the trumpet signal, one must never lose that, not even today!”
¹⁸

It was then noticeably not Schiller, but indeed “an unknown Frenchman,” whose words began the performance. After the overture I did my best to adopt the expression of interested boredom which I saw on the faces of everyone sitting in the semidarkness of the orchestra seats. But with the appearance of the prisoners, the dungeon, and the entry of the prison warder accompanied by Leonore and the Commandant, the scene, in my understanding at the time, visibly grew in stature and was soon overwhelming. I can still hear the singer of the Leonore part as she stood in the way of Pizarro, who was brandishing a dagger, and with a shrill “First kill his wife!” drew a pistol. And then in the shocked silence it really did come from far off: the trumpet signal. One hears and never forgets something like that, or one has never, in any sense ever heard it in the first place.

That more or less was the impression made on me. Of course, the opera’s power, apart from the truly overwhelming music of Beethoven, had to do with the political circumstances which dominated all our thoughts and feelings. At the beginning of the year news had come that one of Uncle Berthold’s sons had frozen to death in the Russian snow. Now we learned that his other son had also been killed. Under the impact of such events, it occurred to me that the trumpet scene with “Our gracious majesty’s will and pleasure,” with the joy of liberation and the jubilation of reunion at the end, would never again be so well understood as by us in the Hitler years. Because where has that ever happened—at a mere trumpet signal the prison gates spring open, those sentenced
to death are freed and the oppressors led away? Even during the applause at the end, I assured my friend Willibald that really everyone must see it. Yet, as they left, the audience talked about how strained top notes of the Florestan sounded of late, about the latest news from the front, and, a moment later, again that Marzelline’s voice was not quite mature. On the other hand, I said it had all been a fairy tale to me, a German fairy tale at that, and really it was very foolhardy of the regime to permit performances of
Fidelio
. At the boarding school Willibald helped me over the fence.

About a week later we traveled to Berlin for the long holidays. On the journey Wolfgang, sighing frequently, was absorbed in reading
War and Peace
, while I, once again, concerned myself with the Italian Renaissance. What I had in front of me was a book about—as it literally said—the “most glorious” and “kindest tyrant in the world,” Lorenzo the Magnificent. In a colorful, somewhat arbitrary collage, the richly illustrated volume described the great days of Florence, its radiance and its dark sides. Immediately after our arrival in Berlin the family came together for supper at the garden table; soon after that Father Wittenbrink was at the garden fence to ask me about the
Fidelio
. I still remember that I replied that I had seen “the German fairy-tale opera,” more of a fairy tale than Aunt Dolly’s beloved
Magic Flute
or
Il Seraglio
. Then he wanted to know details of the production, from the duet at the beginning to the “nameless joy” at the end, whether Don Pizarro had been dressed up as somberly and with “trimmed side whiskers” as the
part demanded, and whether Rocco, although he sang with the mighty bass of a ruler, had embodied the poor wretch that he was.

Naturally, he also got around to the trumpet signal and had questions about that. I expressed reservations about Beethoven’s missing theatrical sense and referred to Schiller, mentioned some inconsistencies in the libretto that the latter would never have allowed, and was finally on to the outburst of joy at the finale. At the end Schiller would no doubt have added, simply as a warning, the nuance of a few countervailing voices, because, according to everything I had learned from him, the world spirit never—or only in political verse—appears in the gallery as the herald of freedom. Instead of overthrowing the scoundrels, the opera instead helps them to an unexpected opportunity, I said. Wittenbrink was shocked. But that was just what he had once told me here at the fence or on the telephone, I objected. He said I was dismissing a great parable by calling it a fairy tale. With many words, haltingly pieced together, I replied, more or less, that it was certainly the most beautiful but at the same time most unlikely fairy tale in the world. “But a fairy tale, nevertheless. That’s not how freedom comes about! And perhaps precisely because of that it’s a particularly German fairy tale! An operatic notion, that’s all!”

That at any rate is what, over time, I was repeatedly reproached with having said. Before we went to the Walken Farm that year, I was annoyed at the lack of comprehension of those around me whenever the
conversation touched on
Fidelio
, especially as even my father went over to the other side. He couldn’t do that, I told him. He was, after all, in my mother’s words, someone who only uttered apocalyptic warnings. “Yes, yes!” he said, reluctantly, but with my remark about a fairy tale I was trivializing a great hope. After a few days under Uncle Berthold’s rod, however, I began to miss our disputes.

1
Kaiserstuhl is a group of volcanic hills northwest of Freiburg, whose slopes have been terraced for vineyards.—Trans.