‘Herr von Schnitzler,’ I say, ‘I’d like to ask you some questions about your biography—’
‘Yes, that’s important, a) for my life history, and b) because what you will have read about me is 95 per cent false.’ His voice comes croaky through a dry old throat.
‘You think—’
‘I don’t think, I know. It is so.’ His voice is gaining strength and timbre.
‘—but I’ve been reading books you wrote yourself,’ I say. ‘They wouldn’t be wrong, would they?’
‘Well, in that case, it’s different,’ he says, but he doesn’t even crack a smile. ‘No, that’s good, that’s very good.’ This is not going to be easy. He looks challengingly in my direction. I can hear him breathing.
Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler was born in 1918 into a wealthy Berlin family. His father Julius Eduard Schnitzler had been Emperor Wilhelm’s consul-general in Antwerp, and a lieutenant in the Prussian military. In 1913, the emperor elevated Julius and his two brothers to the nobility, granting them the privilege of using the prefix ‘von’. The family remained close to power into the Nazi regime. One of von Schnitzler’s cousins was banker to Hitler, another was the sales director of IG-Farben, the company responsible for delivering the poison gas Zyklon B to concentration camps.
Karl-Eduard reacted against the disparities of wealth, and the Nazism around him. At fourteen he became fascinated with Communism. He briefly studied medicine, then switched to an apprenticeship in sales. During World War II he served in Hitler’s army. In June 1944 the British took him into custody in their ‘anti-fascist’ POW camp Ascot, and a few days later he began making broadcasts in German at the BBC for the program ‘German Prisoners of War speak to the Homeland’.
Von Schnitzler was released back to Germany in 1945, where he continued to broadcast from the British Occupied Zone in Cologne, but before long his staunchly Communist views brought him into conflict with the British administrators and he was sacked.
In 1947 he left for the Soviet Occupation Zone. When he got there he told its future leader Walter Ulbricht that he wanted to drop the ‘von’ in front of his name. Ulbricht said, ‘Are you crazy? Everyone should know that all sorts of people are coming over to us!’
This is how the man with the ridiculously noble name became the media face of the regime. ‘The Black Channel’ aired until the very end in October 1989.
Von Schnitzler has started talking and is going into a lot of detail about the war.
I interrupt him. ‘I’d like to talk about “The Black Channel”—’
‘But you’re jumping over a very important part of my life—my time as a POW when I broadcast from the BBC—’
‘I’m happy to talk about that, but it depends how much time you have.’
‘I have time,’ he counters. ‘How much time do you have?’ ‘I have the whole day,’ I say, ‘but presumably we don’t want to talk the whole day. I’d like to talk for a couple of hours.’
Frau von Schnitzler has installed herself away from our sight-line but well within earshot. The apartment is smaller than I thought; it is a far cry from the mansion Karl-Eduard was born in. I think Frau von Schnitzler is sewing. She murmurs something about time that I don’t quite catch.
‘Nein?’ he says, sort of to her.
‘Then maybe one hour,’ I say.
But he continues with his full life story anyway. Von Schnitzler spent his career excerpting and critiquing western television and he will not have his life excerpted by me. He has slipped into a practised authoritarian speech rhythm with occasional startling emphases—any one of which could turn into a rebuke to the listener whose attention waned.
I put out my hand, palm up, and cut him off again. ‘If we only have an hour, I’d really like to talk about “The Black Channel”.’
He’s angry now. ‘But it is more important to talk about history!’ The walking stick slips out of his grasp and falls against the chair. He picks it up again. ‘You can read, read, read about “The Black Channel”!’ He shakes the stick from side to side. ‘“The Black Channel” was part of the Cold War. I was one of the leading figures of the GDR during the Cold War—’ He runs out of puff, or loses the connection.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘and it’s the GDR I’m most interested in.’
‘Aha. Aha,’ he says, suddenly calm. I recognise this pattern of unpredictable shouting followed by bouts of quiet reason from other bullies I have known. ‘OK,’ he says, perfectly politely. ‘What is it you want to know about the Channel?’
‘How did you start it? Was it your idea or were you given the task?’
‘It was my idea,’ he says. ‘I once saw the western politicians on the television news spouting filthy lies about the GDR and before the program was even over I had prepared a script for a broadcast! I socked it right back to them. Then the question was: how often? I insisted on once a week. Today’—he leans towards me, furious—‘Today I could make one every…single…day!’ This is a tantrum engineered to frighten me. ‘That’s how disgusting this, this shitbox television is!’ He points with his stick at the set in the room.
All right then, I think, we’ll go in his direction. ‘What angers you most about the television today?’
‘Nothing “angers” me!’ he says. He is incandescent with rage. Out of the corner of my eye I see Frau von Schnitzler raise her head. ‘That’s why I’m a Communist! So nothing can anger me!’ Then suddenly he’s quiet again. ‘What makes me sorry,’ he says in a withering tone, ‘is what is dished up to people today on that piece-of-filth television. For instance that, that idiotic program—whatsit called?’ He addresses no-one in particular, but a murmur comes from across the room.
He ignores it. ‘They are all idiots, aren’t they?’ he says to me. ‘Marta, do you have to grimace like that?’ Then, as if to himself, ‘What was the name of that program? B-Block’?
‘B-Block?’
‘That one where they locked up ten people—’
‘Ah yes,’ his wife says loudly, ‘now I know what you’re talking about. “Big Brozer.”’
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘“Big Brozer”.’
‘Big Brother’ was a wildly popular ‘reality-tv’ program screened here recently, where people were locked in a house together and filmed day and night by security cameras. Named for the head of the surveillance regime in Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the program offered a cash prize for the person who could survive the longest living with others under such closed and scrutinised circumstances. Orwell was banned in the GDR; I wonder if von Schnitzler has taken particular offence to the program for its Orwellian overtones, or just its general stupidity.
He is looking at me. ‘I think that big television tyrant of yours was involved in that—’
‘She’s Australian,’ Frau von Schnitzler corrects him, ‘not American.’
‘I know what I’m saying,’ he says.
‘Murdoch,’ I say. ‘Yes, he was Australian but now he’s American.’
‘Who cares?’ von Schnitzler counters airily. ‘He’s a global imperialist.’
I open my notebook. I want to quote him back to himself. I am apprehensive. ‘Can I read you something?’ I ask. ‘In November 1965 two easterners tried to get over the border, and one of them was shot to death. And at Christmas time that year you made a program—’
‘Escapes were always tried on at Christmas time,’ he says. He uses the word ‘insziniert’ which means ‘staged’, as though escapes were orchestrated deliberately to make the regime look bad.
He is so offhand about it, I feel my apprehension being replaced with something more businesslike. ‘I want to read you this text from your program, and ask you whether you still agree with it.’ I read from my transcription:
The politics of ‘freeing those in the Eastern Bloc’ is code for liquidating the GDR, and that means civil war, world war, nuclear war, that means ripping apart families, atomic Armageddon—that is inhumanity! Against that we have founded a state! Against tha
t we have erected a border with strict control measures to stop what went on during the thirteen years that it was left open and abused—that is humane! That is a service to humanity!
When I finish, he’s staring at me, chin up. ‘And your question, young lady?’
‘My question is whether today you are of the same view about the Wall as something humane, and the killings at the border an act of peace.’
He raises his free arm, inhales and screams, ‘More! Than! Ever!’ He brings his fist down.
I’m startled for an instant. Then I’m concerned that Frau von Schnitzler will stop the interview. ‘You considered it necessary?’ I ask quickly.
‘I did not “consider” it necessary. It was absolutely necessary! It was an historical necessity. It was the most useful construction in all of German history! In European history!’
‘Why?’
‘Because it prevented imperialism from contaminating the east. It walled it in.’
The only people walled-in were his own. It is as if he has followed my thinking.
‘Moreover people in the GDR were not “walled-in”! They could go to Hungary, they could go to Poland. They just couldn’t go to NATO countries. Because, naturally, you don’t travel around in enemy territory. It’s as simple as that.’
This is so mad that I can’t think of a question immediately. But in the next breath he contradicts himself. It seems to be his modus operandi to have a bet each way.
‘I do think, though, that in the last few years they should have opened it up earlier,’ he says. Then, almost ruefully, ‘The people would have come back again.’ I wonder if he can truly believe this. The eastern states are still, seven years on, losing people. He shifts in his seat. ‘Most of them, most of them would have.’
Von Schnitzler is one of the cadre whose ideas were moulded in the 1920s by the battle against the gross free market injustices of the Weimar Republic and then the outrages of fascism, and who went on to see the birth and then the death of the nation built on those ideas. He is a true believer and for him my questions only serve to demonstrate a sorry lack of faith.
‘You lived through the whole GDR, from beginning to end—’
‘So I did, so I did.’
‘Is there anything in your opinion that could have been done better, or differently?’
‘Oh I’m sure there are things that could have been done differently or better, but that is no longer the question to examine.’
‘I think it is,’ I say, although something stirs uncomfortably in the back of my mind. ‘There was a serious attempt to build a socialist state, and we should examine why, at the end, that state no longer exists. It’s important.’ The something reveals itself to be the memory of the westerners Scheller and Uwe also having so little interest in the GDR.
‘I noticed relatively early,’ he says, ‘that we would not be able to survive economically. And when we started to get tied up in this ridiculous GDR success propaganda—exaggerated harvest results and production levels and so on—I withdrew from that altogether and confined myself to my specialist area: the work against imperialism. Exclusively. And for that reason today I am so be-lov-ed,’ he says, heavy with sarcasm.
‘What do you mean “beloved”—by whom?’ I ask.
‘That’s why I’m so beloved by all those who think imperialistically and act imperialistically and bring up their children imperialistically!’ Each time he says ‘imperialistically’ he thrusts his fist on the stick forward towards me. This man, who could turn inhumanity into humanity, faces now perhaps his greatest challenge: to turn the fact that he is hated into the fact that he is, in the face of all available evidence, right.
‘Your program was based on exposing the lies of the western media. When you noticed the false success propaganda at home, didn’t you feel a responsibility to do the same?’
‘No. I focused in my program quite deliberately and exclusively on anti-imperialism, not on GDR propaganda.’
‘But you understand my question, Herr von Schnitzler. The success propaganda in the GDR media was also lies—’
‘It did distance the people from us, because it was in such stark contrast to the reality.’ He can switch from one view to another with frightening ease. I think it is a sign of being accustomed to such power that the truth does not matter because you cannot be contradicted.
‘Why didn’t you comment then on these lies?’ ‘I wouldn’t even consider it!’ He frowns and pulls his neck in like a turtle in disgust. ‘I’m not about to criticise my own republic!’
‘Why not?’
‘The critique of imperialism is quite enough!’
‘I criticise my own country—’ I say.
He doesn’t miss a beat. ‘You’ve a lot more reason to.’
There’s nothing for it but to laugh. ‘That may be,’ I say.
We switch to the present. He starts to talk about ‘my very good friend Erich Mielke’.
‘Did he have a file on you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You haven’t applied to have a look at it?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Out of curiosity.’
‘My curiosity is directed solely towards the machinations of imperialism and how they can be countered.’
Checkmate. So I start another question. ‘The internal observation of the GDR population, with the apparatus of official and unofficial collaborators—’
He cuts me off. ‘You can throw 90 per cent of what you know about that out.’ He’s angry again. ‘It’s all lies. Mind you, in my opinion even 10 per cent of what they’re saying would have been too much.’
‘Are you saying that there was only 10 per cent of the number claimed of Stasi employees assigned to work on the East German population?’
‘Yes. It’s all been exaggerated immeasurably. In any case I am exceptionally sceptical about numbers.’
He changes tack, back to his friend Mielke. ‘The Wall was necessary to defend a threatened nation. And there was Erich Mielke at the top, a living example of the most humane human being.’
I have never heard Mielke referred to in this way. He was too fierce and feared to be referred to with anything like affection. I look away to the shelves on the wall close behind him. They are full of books and small objects of memory, a row of pill bottles and a cheap tape deck. The words ‘the most humane human being’ hang in the air. He starts to cough, hacking and deep, into a handkerchief, then raises the pink drink to his lips.
‘And how are you finding it now after 1989, now that you are living in capitalism or, as you say, in imperialism? Is it what you expected,’ I hold his gaze, ‘or is it not as bad as you thought?’
‘I live,’ he says fiercely, ‘among the enemy. And not for the first time in my life. I lived among the enemy during the Nazi time as well.’ He works himself into another little fury. I see Marta watching him, and I wonder whether the medicine is to deal with this, or with its effects. ‘What I can tell you,’ he says, ‘is that as long as the GDR existed no swine in Bonn would have dared start a war!’ He gasps for breath. His hand has formed a fist, but he keeps it in his lap. ‘The GDR would have prevented that by its very existence!’ He means that so long as the Iron Curtain was up, the NATO countries would not have bombed the former Yugoslavia for fear the Russians would have retaliated on behalf of the Serbs.
He’s puffing and cross and, I think, finally stuck. He looks at me and I can see the tiny red veins filigreed across his eyeballs. ‘Full Stop!’ he screams. ‘This…conversation…is…now…over!’
There’s a brief pause.
‘Thank you very much.’ I say.
‘What?’ He shouts back.
‘I said thank you.’
‘Oh. You’re welcome.’
I start collecting my things, and then remember that I have brought him a small gift from Australia. It is an enamel pin of the German and Australian flags crossed over one another.
‘What’s this?’ he asks, taking it from
me and holding it far away from his eyes.
‘That’s our flag—for Australia,’ I start, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t find—’
‘Just a moment. Just a moment,’ he says, getting a fix on it. ‘That is not my flag. That’s the Federal Republic’s.’
I think he might scream at me again. ‘I know,’ I say quickly, ‘but I couldn’t find one with the GDR flag at home.’
‘OK,’ he says, suddenly happy enough, ‘I think I have room for that over there,’ and he gestures behind him, to Marx and Lenin and even Stalin.
14
The Worse You Feel
I call Julia and ask her over for lunch. I make salmon pasta with mascarpone, egg yolks and cream—I’m putting as many calories into something as I know how. She rings about the time she’s due, and asks whether it’s OK to be late.
‘Sure,’ I say, ‘About how late?’
‘Half an hour.’
‘See you then.’
I stand at the kitchen window. A man wearing gloves comes into the yard from one of the side wings, carrying a metal bucket of orange coal dust. He opens the hopper and pours it in, particles the consistency of talc, or something cremated. The hopper clangs shut in a burst of orange cloud. This dust is everywhere. When you can’t smell it, it’s still there, in the orange winter air.
When Julia arrives she’s oddly polite, like a person in someone else’s house. I guess she’s used to slipping in when I’m not here. We sit down in the kitchen and I open a beer.
‘Mind if I smoke?’ she asks.
‘Not at all. I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I just started again,’ she says. She lights a cigarette and smokes half of it before she stubs it out.
We eat and afterwards she lights another, holding it in a practised way in the cleft of her index and middle fingers, moving it around as she talks. She is in the same chair as before, the one with the blind tethered to it. Her back is to the window and her face is in shadow, her eyes shiny and dark. Behind her the sky is the colour of wet wool. I have invited her here for a meal, but we both know there is more of her story to tell.