Authors and Genres

The Slovakian translator and author, Marian Hatala, talks to the German author, Ingo Schulze, about the way he experienced the “Monday Demonstrations” in East Germany in 1989 and 1990, about ideas that somehow got lost after the Wall came down, about the East-Bloc mindset and about the way his novel “Neue Leben” (New Lives) was received in countries like Italy, USA and Hungary. This is a video-recording of an event held at the Goethe-Institut in Bratislava.

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In your book “Neue Leben” you mention Bratislava - Enrico Türmer leaves Dresden on the night train to Bratislava to meet up with his Austrian lady-love. Afterwards he rushes off to Prnow on the next night train. What is it about this town – have you already been here before? Maybe you arranged a rendezvous here like the one mentioned in the book?

In the book I, of course, arranged the rendezvous, but the story is definitely the story of Enrico Türmer. It is always a bit of both. When I was in Bratislava the last time in 2003, we walked to the railway station with Marta and looked at the mosaic which I wanted to describe. Once more I examined it more closely and the description I arrived at is the one that finally went into the book. I had been here for one or two days back in the days of the GDR and then back again, as I said, in 2003 – and – lucky for me – back again now. This time with my book.

In your book you did not call the station by its Slovakian name – “Glavna Stanica”, you used the Czech name “Hlavni Nadrazi”. Was that because you are more familiar with the Czech language or was it simply a coincidence?

Last week I attended a Translators’ Workshop with 18 translators – they had a lot questions like this one. The outcome was that we did not just find answers to the questions, but it became clear that I must have made a few changes in the German version. Had we spoken about this earlier, I would probably have corrected them. I do not know how that thing with the station names came about. Maybe I read it somewhere on a timetable – no idea – but, all the same, one should really strive for accuracy.

Let’s get back to the “Monday Demonstrations” of 1989 in Dresden, in Altenburg and in other towns of the former GDR – did you get involved back then in what was going on politically or did you give it all a wide berth like Enrico Türmer? In your book there is a sentence that says that the demonstrators all rushed home after the march to watch it on TV and to see if they had possibly been spotted by the TV cameras.

That is where Enrico Türmer and I are completely different. He is someone who wants to live, suffer and write in the GDR, so that he can publish his writings in the West and one day be expelled to the West as a dissident. The more the regime in the GDR starts to crumble, the more insecure he becomes, as his lifelong dream starts to fade. Nobody is going to be interested anymore in his courageous writings. This was not the way I thought – I was far too directly involved. I did not think for one minute that it would all go so fast – that the changes would be so drastic. We thought that, if we could hope for anything at all, it would be just a few extremely slow-moving reforms.

Back then it was something really uplifting for me – something we could only ever have imagined in our wildest dreams. We had all read about Gandhi, about the Hungarian Uprising and about the events of 1968 and thought, “Oh, if only we could experience something like that”. Then suddenly the situation arose and I was on the train to Leipzig. The reason for this was that at the end of September I had heard that people were now demonstrating in their tens of thousands. Until then I had thought it was a relatively small number of people who mostly wanted to get out and had applied for an exit visa to West Germany. I had always said that maybe one day I’ll try and get out, too, but I never ever got to the point where it became an absolute “must”. I told myself that there would have to be a few more disaffected people for me to think that the time was right. That is why I then had to go to Leipzig, otherwise I would have lost my own personal credibility. Fear was the order of the day – we did not know what was going to happen. I did not tell any of my family what I was up to – in that respect somewhat similar to Türmer. For example, I said I was going to the library. For me it all had to be “in-your-face” – I was simply exhilarated to be part of it. I would be marching along, putting one foot in front of the other, and it would suddenly occur to me that I was part of an illegal demonstration – a somewhat weird feeling, to say the least.

What you were hinting at before ….. People coming together for a historical event of global proportions on the one hand, yet, on the other, the surroundings being all so familiar to the them – their square, their streets, their city. They obediently waited for the light at the pedestrian crossing to turn green, they did not storm the streets, jumping in front of cars. They actually waited till the light turned green, but that does not change the impact the demonstrations had. Mundane things like this or the fact that they had to go to the toilet are all par for the course – it was what made it so real. The people did not start to lead completely different lives or suddenly become heroes. If you look at those first decisive demonstrations in Leipzig back in October 1989, you can really see just how great the atmosphere was. There was a lot of fear, but also a good deal of euphoria and there was a lot of space in the crowd - they were all in couples or small groups of three to five people. There was a great feeling of belonging, but it was not like the demonstrations of the 1968 revolt. They all went to the “demo” after work and the aim was to try and walk round the whole of the Leipzig ring road. It was one of the most beautiful things I have experienced in my life. The difficulty then was when I had to leave the anonymity and the euphoria of Leipzig and return to little, old Altenburg and to tell myself, “My name is Ingo Schulze, I live at 104 Georg-Schumann-Strasse, I am a dramatic advisor at the town’s municipal theatre and now I would like to set up the New Forum’s media group.” This would have made me known to the authorities and some sinister-looking guys would have paid me a visit. By the end of October however when Honecker’s successor, Egon Krenz, took over, we realised with great relief that he was not going to roll out the tanks – much to our surprise, as he thought what happened on Tiananmen square was a good thing. We all realised – something was going to change. What however was to change exactly was at that point not quite clear.

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I found an interview in which you were quoted as follows, “My problem however is not the disappearance of the East, but the disappearance of the West – a West with a human face.” What are you getting at? A kind of nostalgia for all things Western? Was the West back then more honourable for you than all that talk of socialism with a human face – á la Alexander Dubček? This surprises me somewhat and that is why I would like to ask you the following question – The East did not actually disappear without a trace. When I am in Berlin, I can spend hours chatting away to, what they call, former citizens of the GDR, but this hardly ever happens with Westerners. In my opinion a kind of solidarity has survived. The East is somehow still present. But that was not really a question, was it?

It was actually two very big questions. The expression “a West with a human face” of course refers to 1968 and Dubček. It infers that with the collapse of the East Bloc many of the ideas, which of course also prevailed in the West, have died a death. The West – or should I say capitalism – has never been fond of sharing its profits. If we look at the 19th century, how the unions and labour movements fought for tolerable working conditions and a bearable life – the welfare state did not simply grow on trees. Child labour was abolished because they needed soldiers and a child that had been put to hard work was not fit enough to be used by the military. However I feel that the East Bloc was at least good at one thing, i.e. making the West more socially oriented. It was not until after the Second World War that the West became more socially minded – what I mean here is the introduction of the welfare state. Since 1989/90 however they have unfortunately been slowly dismantling it. The excuses they make for this like globalisation or the fact that we are all living beyond our means sound particularly cynical. What I am trying to say here is not that I mourn the loss of the GDR, but that I mourn the loss of all the opportunities we have missed since 1990. Opportunities that also would have made the West a better place to live. For example, it would have been good to say the Cold War is now over, no more frontline hostility, now we can start spending our money on things that matter, not only in Germany, but all over the world – this unfortunately just did not happen. This is what is meant by the expression.

In the East, maybe the GDR was in this respect a particularly crass example, a process took place that swept through the whole of the East Bloc – it is just that with us it was much faster and more radical. Nothing was ever the same again and it all happened in the space of one year. It was not just the street names, the money, the school books, the TV and the clothes that changed, but even the air itself - a positive development in this case. Travel changed, too. Human relationships were even viewed in a different light. Of course there is still love and hate, but suddenly they were related to each other in a different way. I know of no relationship in which the people did not feel that these social changes had in some way affected the way they related to each other. Some were brought closer together, others were forced apart – everything simply changed. Of course we are still imbibed with certain ways of thinking – I was 27 when the Wall came down. That in itself has left its mark and there are other things that are still ingrained in me. That is the advantage of coming from the East – we have experienced both systems. Of course we do not know the West however as well as someone who grew up in the West. You have to lose something to find something new. The experience of growing up in the East however is important for me in as much as it has led me to believe that the majority of the people living on the Earth today have been through a similar experience – that they did not grow up in the West, but in another system that in one way or another was in conflict with the West.

How is a book like yours received in countries that have no first-hand experience of communism? In “Neue Leben” did you have to explain certain things, add things or give a few tips to make certain parts of the book more accessible?

The main problem is not the historical detail, we have footnotes for that. For me it is very interesting to see how the book is received – for example, in Italy it was quite a hit. For the first time I had the feeling that I had actually made the big time. In the USA there were some furious political commentaries in the big newspapers. It came out in the USA last October. Some of the bigger names in the world of literary criticism wrote some reviews that were – I would not say damning – but were very critical and not particularly about the literary quality. On the Internet there were some fairly good comments to be read. I do not know if it has anything to do with the subject, but I always seem to have problems with France. Although my books have all been published there, I never get the feeling I am actually getting through to the readers there. Italy is different, Spain is different. The USA, too, but not in the same way. I am really thrilled that my book has now been published in Slovakian. I love all my books – an author is of course the least qualified of all people to say such a thing and strain and effort do not count at all -, but I think that when it comes to substance and structure this book is the best. If I had to decide which of all my books was the best, then it would be this one. The Hungarians have translated all my books and it is always good to read the books of an author you already know. In Hungary it was very well received.

It has been translated into eleven languages – and although it is the least translated of all my books, there were still eleven brave publishing houses and translators who were prepared to take on the challenge. It is also interesting that it is to be published in Brazil. I certainly do not have to tell them what it is like to live under a dictatorship. You do not really get to know a book until you have faced an audience, faced the readers and faced the translators – and answered all their questions. There are many different ways of interpreting a book and for me it always particularly uplifting to be given one of my books in translation.

One last question now – What do we want to wish this Slovakian edition? It is up to you.

That is quite easy – I hope it will be read by many people. A few of them might even want to buy it, but it can still be read in a library, of course. I would also like to thank you for all the wonderful work we did together. I really have to say it is “our” book. In German it is my book, even if there were quite a few others involved, but in Slovakian it really is our joint project and you put off so many other jobs to work with me – and for that I would like to wholeheartedly thank you

I would like to thank you for everything you taught me whilst working on the book. Good Luck! Hope to see you again soon.