by Heinz Rein
Lassehn walks along Grosse Frankfurter Strasse, he lingers for a few minutes by the huge craters blown in the U-Bahn on Strausberger Platz, then continues on his way. Walking has become strolling, nearly nonchalant and serene; for the first time since he has been back in Berlin he feels almost at ease. The spring sun burns pleasantly on the back of his neck and chases the sluggish blood intoxicatingly around his veins, strangely even the complete destruction all around him seems less terrifying. Today Lassehn no longer finds it unusual, almost suggestive, in fact, that the girls swing their hips and even manage the occasional smile.
Stretching ahead of him now is Grosse Frankfurter Strasse, which extends from Strausberger Platz into a magnificent, broad street with a central promenade, which points straight out of the city towards the east. Nothing remains of the former greatness of this street, however, only its situation reveals that it was once a central axis of Berlin. Here too the black grimaces of the burnt-out buildings grin on either side, the fleshless skeletons of the railway buildings stretch like cages crashed to the ground, among heaps of debris. The old people’s homes and hospitals between Lebuserstrasse and Fruchtstrasse are also nothing but ruins; the Rose-Theater, the playhouse of the petite bourgeoisie of Berlin East, no longer exists. Where Grosse Frankfurter Strasse becomes Frankfurter Allee there is the Frankfurter Tor, but the name is now nothing but an allegory, there is no gate, nor any construction resembling a gate, it is just a memory, and then only for the very old or for local historians, of which there are, strangely, many in the giant city of Berlin. Other residents of the area no longer know that the intersection between Grosse Frankfurter Strasse and Frankfurter Allee is still called Frankfurter Tor.
The Weberwiese at the crossroads of Memeler Strasse, Frankfurter Allee and Königsberger Strasse has abandoned its actual task of supplying oxygen and peace in the stone and ozone-poor solitude of Berlin East. It was never beautiful or even well looked-after, it was always a place for poor people, and while the term ‘Wiese’ – a meadow – may once have been justified for this square in former decades, for a long time now it has not even been a patch of ground that might prompt thoughts of growth and harvest, only a bit of sand with a few pitiful bushes and a number of old trees, and now it is not even that. They have dug it up in honour of the war from the air, they have drilled into it and raised molehill-like mounds on it that look like giant coffins and are officially called slit trenches.
Lassehn is so immersed in himself – his legs have walked all by themselves – that he only comes to when he walks into a big mound of rubble. A glance at the number of a house shows him that he has already overshot his goal. Quite by chance his eye falls on a squad of soldiers who are busy building an anti-tank barrier. An advertising column whose top part has splintered away is being filled with sand and stones, and joists are being rammed into the ground, the gaps between them filled with twisted company signs, grilles, beams and boards, and a truck keeps bringing new joists and iron bars. But Lassehn is interested in none of that, it isn’t the first anti-tank barrier that he has watched being built, his eye is caught by the young lieutenant who seems to be in charge of the squad. Caution warns him not to linger, but to move on immediately, even if the young lieutenant was once a good friend and schoolmate, that doesn’t mean anything, people are unpredictable these days, the false emotion of a misunderstood sense of duty and honour (not to mention slimy submissiveness and hypocritical servility) has obstructed and distorted people’s minds.
Lassehn reluctantly decides to walk on, the possibility of saying a few words to someone who belongs to his former life is too tempting. After a few steps Lassehn stops and turns round, glancing behind him, and from that point there is nothing more to be done. His eyes meet those of the young lieutenant, their eyes fix on one another and now Lassehn can no longer tear himself away, he stands there as the young officer strides towards him.
‘Is it possible?’ the young officer exclaims. ‘Joachim Lassehn!’
Lassehn nods and extends his hand. ‘Dietrich Tolksdorff,’ he says emotionally, ‘so it’s really you?’
‘Of course it is, old boy,’ Tolksdorff says, and energetically grips Lassehn’s outstretched hand. ‘What a coincidence! How are things, Joachim?’
Even though the question is merely an empty phrase, it catches Lassehn completely unawares. What answer is he, the deserter, supposed to give to his former friend, the lieutenant? ‘Not too bad,’ he says, avoiding the question, but he knows he will have to say more than that. At school Tolksdorff was top in maths and Latin, those disciplines in which logic is an essential component.
Tolksdorff studies Lassehn critically. ‘You’re dressed very oddly, Joachim,’ he says.
Lassehn shrugs. ‘I had a task to perform, one that I couldn’t really do in uniform,’ he replies. ‘What about you?’ he asks, to head off any further questions. ‘Why aren’t you at the front?’
Tolksdorff shrugs as well, a slow, resigned movement. ‘The front is everywhere now, Joachim,’ he says, ‘and I took a bad knock at Nettuno, so I’m not much use for deployment at the front. At the moment I’m a trainer with the fifth intelligence division in Nedlitz, but right now we’re being deployed here.’ He nods to the anti-tank barrier currently under construction.
‘Is there still any point in it?’ Lassehn asks, looking his old friend firmly in the eyes.
Tolksdorff turns his head to the side. ‘It isn’t up to a soldier to ask the point of things,’ he replies, ‘he is given his orders and he carries them out. You’re a soldier too, Joachim, even if you don’t look like one right now, so I don’t understand your question.’
Lassehn shakes his head. ‘I am a soldier,’ he says firmly, ‘that is true, but not out of ambition or vocation, while you …’
Tolksdorff turns slowly back to him. ‘Well? You can speak openly, Joachim.’
‘You’re a soldier by inclination, so you accept military orders as the supreme law,’ Lassehn continues slowly. ‘Don’t you?’
‘You’re mistaken,’ Tolksdorff replies, ‘I’m a soldier because our fatherland needs me.’
‘To abuse you!’ Lassehn cuts in.
Tolksdorff looks at him in astonishment. ‘Excuse me?’
‘To abuse you, I said,’ Lassehn says. ‘Or have you not yet realized that an enormous abuse is being perpetrated on you, on you and me, on your people and all of us, our whole people?’
Tolksdorff looks at the ground in front of him, then quickly grips Lassehn’s right arm. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we can’t stay here, let’s sit down for a few minutes.’ He points to a few large blocks of stone that have been blown out of a house and are obstructing a ruined portal.
Then they sit down side by side in the half-ruined hallway, with a view of several factory courtyards now stripped of life. Lassehn in his worn, dark-brown winter coat, black trousers with no turn-ups which Klose gave him this morning, with a ski-cap and his shabby boots contrasts strangely with Lieutenant Tolksdorff, who is wearing his impeccable light-grey leather coat, made-to-measure riding trousers and high black boots. But he is far from downcast and is no longer tormented by the feeling that his own way of doing things is contemptible. He has completely shed that emotion, which took hold of him at first, and something new has taken its place, it is as yet nameless and formless, but it is there, and that something makes him feel superior to his former friend.
‘You say they’re abusing us,’ Tolksdorff begins. ‘I won’t even say that you are completely wrong, but I am of the opinion that discussion of the matter is very unimportant right now.’
‘Excuse me?’ Lassehn says furiously. ‘I think …’
Tolksdorff shakes his head. ‘Let me finish, Joachim,’ he says. ‘The discussion of this question is unimportant right now, and I also want to tell you why it is. At the moment it isn’t a matter of abuse, justice or injustice, it’s just about Germany, about our lives. That must be clear, isn’t it?’
Lassehn pauses for a moment, then sha
kes his head. ‘It’s about our lives, it’s about Germany, that much is true,’ he replies, ‘but the premises are false. It’s precisely because it’s about Germany that we need to finish it off, straight away.’
‘Finish what off?’ Tolksdorff asks. ‘How do you imagine that? What are we going to finish off?’
‘The war, of course! Or do you want the areas that have been spared so far to be rolled over, stamped into the ground and destroyed as well?’
‘Joachim, you don’t know what you’re saying,’ Tolksdorff replies. ‘We’re fighting precisely to keep that from happening.’
Lassehn laughs briefly. ‘You still believe that, Dietrich?’ he asks. ‘The game’s up! Can’t you see that what once sounded like music to your ears is only a croak?’
‘Comparisons like that prove nothing,’ Tolksdorff says dismissively. He takes two cigarettes from the outside pocket of his coat and hands one to Lassehn, then he flicks open a lighter and holds the weak flame in the hollow of his hand.
Lassehn bends over Tolksdorff’s hands to light his cigarette, and only then does he look carefully into his friend’s face. Just now it was the well-known, familiar face of his former classmate, with the narrow skull, the high forehead, the clever brown eyes, the straight nose above a narrow mouth, but now that he looks more closely at his features he notices that while the basic shapes have remained unaltered, new, unfamiliar lines are drawn on them, and another expression has taken root there. The joie de vivre and hope for the future, the openness and freshness of mind have gone, to be replaced by resignation and stubborn defiance, and not even forced optimism can conceal them.
‘Comparisons like that prove everything,’ Lassehn says, picking up the conversation. ‘Wasn’t that same tune played over and over at Stalingrad, at the bridgehead over the Kuban, at Mius and Warsaw, at Tobruk and Nettuno, in Normandy and at Aachen? Keep going, keep going and weather the storm! And what was the result of that? We’re now taking lessons in Hitlerian strategy on German soil, now it’s the turn of Kassel, Chemnitz, Bratislava, Königsberg, Frankfurt an der Oder, and tomorrow it will be Bremen, Munich, Rostock and finally Berlin!’
‘Stop it, Joachim,’ Tolksdorff pleads. ‘It can’t come to that!’
Lassehn laughs bitterly again. ‘But that’s not up to you, Dietrich! You lot can’t stop the enemy!’
Tolksdorff raises his head again and turns slowly towards Lassehn.
‘You lot, you say, you lot, do you no longer consider yourself part of it?’ he asks urgently.
‘No,’ Lassehn says curtly, ‘I’m not part of it any more, and I don’t want to be.’
There is a long silence between the two young men, they sit closely side by side on the blocks of stone, and threads seem to have been spun between them, woven out of their former friendship, but now all of a sudden a gulf has opened up between them, so wide that the threads are bound to tear.
Tolksdorff is the first to break the silence. ‘You’ve always been a decent chap, Joachim,’ he says, ‘I don’t understand what makes you speak like that.’
Lassehn looks at him closely. ‘And you’ve always been far too clever, Dietrich, not to understand what’s going on all around us. You have eyes in your head, and logical thinking was always your strong point. Or have you gone blind and let them glue up your brain?’
‘Shut up!’ Tolksdorff says gruffly.
‘You must be able to see that any further resistance is madness,’ Lassehn insists. ‘You can still save a lot if …’
‘You, you, you’re always saying you,’ Tolksdorff exclaims, ‘I can’t bear to hear it any more. We’re powerless!’
‘Exactly, powerless! That’s the right word,’ Lassehn says, ‘outwardly powerless and inwardly even more so, but if you are or we are, because this time I have to include myself, it’s our own fault. We’ve been lied to and deceived, our credulousness has been abused and we have been reduced to robots …’
‘Joachim,’ Tolksdorff says, and his voice has lost its edge, it is quiet and pleading now.
‘Maybe you don’t want to hear it,’ Lassehn rages, ‘because it takes away your peace of mind, Dietrich Tolksdorff, it drives a spike into the armour of phrases that you’ve cocooned yourself up in so that you don’t have to think?’
‘Shut up,’ Tolksdorff says again. ‘You mustn’t think me stupid enough not to recognize that our foundation, which seemed unassailable and inviolable, unshakeable and secure, as if for all eternity …’
‘… for a thousand years,’ Lassehn says sarcastically.
‘Yes, for a thousand years, it seemed to be built for all eternity,’ Tolksdorff continues seriously, ‘that foundation has been shattered. Do you think I could ignore the fact that our situation is becoming increasingly hopeless?’
‘Now I’ve got you, Dietrich,’ Lassehn says triumphantly, ‘it couldn’t be otherwise, because the fact that you have listened to me without losing your temper has already proven that you are broken inside and no longer believe what you pretend to believe. That’s the only reason I have dared to speak so openly.’
‘I would rather bring the conversation to an end, Joachim,’ Tolksdorff says wearily.
‘Out of the question, that would be cowardice in the face of a friend,’ Lassehn says firmly. ‘I have at least one more question to ask you.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘Even though you’ve recognized all this, you’re still going along with it?’
‘Are you doing anything else, Joachim?’ Tolksdorff asks.
Lassehn looks at him steadily. ‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘I’ve stopped going along with it, for a few months now.’ He is about to add that he has moved from not-going-along-with-it to being active, but changes his mind as it seems too risky.
‘You’ve …’ Tolksdorff begins, but he doesn’t finish his sentence, he can’t bring himself to utter the word.
‘Yes, I’ve deserted, I’ve abandoned Hitler’s bloody flag,’ Lassehn says firmly, ‘and I will tell you why I did. Because I could no longer go along with that madness, because I didn’t want to be guilty for the crimes that were committed on foreigners and on our own people, and are still being committed every day and every hour. I admit that this recognition has to a certain extent come to me post festum, or only now been awoken in me, previously it was repressed by the cowardice that refuses to look things clearly in the eye. I ran away because of personal emotions, so to speak, but they have found a retrospective justification in this recognition, and I assume responsibility for that too, but you assume responsibility for nothing, Dietrich.’
‘That’s not true, Joachim,’ says Tolksdorff, loosening the belt of his coat and undoing the buttons. ‘I have assumed responsibility for Germany, my boy, I have been awarded the Iron Cross first and second class and the German Cross in gold. Does that mean nothing?’
Lassehn has only cast a fleeting glance at the decorations. ‘You have misunderstood me, Dietrich,’ he says, ‘I haven’t called your love of the fatherland into doubt, but it has, as I must repeat, been abused, it is as I just said: you aren’t taking responsibility for anything. You think you’re doing your duty by protecting a state which, if you don’t despise it, you at least reject, but you haven’t the courage to accept this fact and draw the conclusions from it. For all the military courage that you have squandered on an unworthy object, you are a moral coward, because you are doing nothing to change your present situation even though you have grasped it. Whatever you say and whatever you do, you do even though you know better.’
Tolksdorff has been visibly shaken by Lassehn’s words, his young face is in turmoil. ‘But I can’t stab my people in the back,’ he says desperately.
‘It won’t be our people that you stab in the back,’ Lassehn says quickly, ‘it will be this state.’
Tolksdorff shakes his head. ‘But it’s the same thing.’
‘No,’ Lassehn says firmly. ‘That’s exactly what it isn’t. Germany is not identical with National Socialism, a
nd neither is Hitler’s state with the German people.’
Tolksdorff buttons up his coat again, he does it slowly and with pedantically precise movements to gain time. ‘It’s a hopeless situation,’ he says at last. ‘Both possibilities are equally terrible, Germany losing the war and winning the war, that has been clear to me for a long time, but I have resisted that recognition, and basically I still do, I simply can’t believe that German statesmen and generals can be so irresponsible as to sacrifice a whole people simply for their own sake.’
‘You must believe it,’ Lassehn says harshly. ‘There’s no getting around it. I have never been a National Socialist, you must remember that I had lots of problems with that at school, and I was never really clear why it was so. Even today I basically know only that my aversion is made up of many different components.’
