to describe. I was sometimes bored in school, annoyed, chiefly by our religion teacher (and he, of course by me: such comments are to be interpreted bilaterally), but did I “suffer”? No. Further clarification: my unconquerable (and still unconquered) aversion to the Nazis was not revolt: they revolted me , repelled me on every level of my existence: conscious and instinctive, aesthetic and political. To this day I have been unable to find any entertaining, let alone aesthetic, dimension to the Nazis and their era, a fact that makes me shudder when I see certain film and stage productions. I simply could not join the Hitler Youth, I did not join it, and that was that.
A further clarification (there is yet another to come!): justifiable mistrust of my memory. All this happened forty-eight to forty-four years ago, and I have no notes or jottings to resort to; they were burned or blown to bits in an attic of 17 Karolinger-Ring in Cologne. Moreover, I am no longer sure of how some of my personal experiences synchronize with historical events. For example, I would have bet almost anything that it was in the fall of 1934 that Göring, in his capacity as Prime Minister ofPrussia, caused seven young Communists of Cologne to be beheaded with an ax. I would have lost that bet: it was the fall of 1933. And my memory doesn’t betray me when I recall that one morning a schoolmate of mine, a member of the black-uniformed S.S., exhausted yet with the hectic light of the chase still in his eyes, told me they had spent the night scouring the villas of Godesberg for the former cabinet minister Treviranus. Thank God (as I, not he, thought) without success. But when, to make quite sure, I proceed to look it up, I find that Treviranus had already emigrated by 1933; in 1933, the minimum age for membership in the S.S. was eighteen, though we were only sixteen then; thus, this memory cannot be placed earlier than 1935 or 1936. In other words, either Treviranus must have reentered the German Reich illegally in 1935 or 1936, or the S.S. must have been fed wrong information. The story itself—that strange blend of exhaustion and eyes shining with the light of the chase—I can vouch for, but I cannot place it.
Final clarification or, if you prefer, warning: the title What’s to Become of the Boy? should arouse neither false hopes nor false fears. Not every boy whose family and friends have reason to ask themselves and him this eternally apprehensive question does, after various delays and roundabout approaches, eventually become a writer; and I would like to stress that, at the time it was put, this question was both serious and warranted. In fact, I am not sure whether my mother, were she still alive, wouldn’t still be asking the same question today: “What’s to become of the boy?” Perhaps there are times when weshould be asking it about elderly and successful politicians, church dignitaries, writers, et cetera.
2
So it is somewhat warily that I now enter upon the “realistic,” the chronologically confused path, wary of my own and other people’s autobiographical pronouncements. The mood and the situation I can vouch for, also the facts bound up with moods and situations; but, confronted with verifiable historical facts, I cannot vouch for the synchronization, as witness the above examples.
I simply don’t remember whether in January 1933 I was still or no longer a member of a Marian youth fellowship; nor would it be accurate if I were to say that I had “gone to school” for four years under Nazi rule. For I did not go to school for four years; there were, if not countless, certainly uncounted days when—apart from vacations, holidays, sickness, which must in any case be deducted—I didn’t go to school at all. I loved what I might call the “school of the streets” (I can’t say “school of the bushes,” since Cologne’s old town has little, and never had much, in the way of bushes). Those streets between the
A further clarification (there is yet another to come!): justifiable mistrust of my memory. All this happened forty-eight to forty-four years ago, and I have no notes or jottings to resort to; they were burned or blown to bits in an attic of 17 Karolinger-Ring in Cologne. Moreover, I am no longer sure of how some of my personal experiences synchronize with historical events. For example, I would have bet almost anything that it was in the fall of 1934 that Göring, in his capacity as Prime Minister ofPrussia, caused seven young Communists of Cologne to be beheaded with an ax. I would have lost that bet: it was the fall of 1933. And my memory doesn’t betray me when I recall that one morning a schoolmate of mine, a member of the black-uniformed S.S., exhausted yet with the hectic light of the chase still in his eyes, told me they had spent the night scouring the villas of Godesberg for the former cabinet minister Treviranus. Thank God (as I, not he, thought) without success. But when, to make quite sure, I proceed to look it up, I find that Treviranus had already emigrated by 1933; in 1933, the minimum age for membership in the S.S. was eighteen, though we were only sixteen then; thus, this memory cannot be placed earlier than 1935 or 1936. In other words, either Treviranus must have reentered the German Reich illegally in 1935 or 1936, or the S.S. must have been fed wrong information. The story itself—that strange blend of exhaustion and eyes shining with the light of the chase—I can vouch for, but I cannot place it.
Final clarification or, if you prefer, warning: the title What’s to Become of the Boy? should arouse neither false hopes nor false fears. Not every boy whose family and friends have reason to ask themselves and him this eternally apprehensive question does, after various delays and roundabout approaches, eventually become a writer; and I would like to stress that, at the time it was put, this question was both serious and warranted. In fact, I am not sure whether my mother, were she still alive, wouldn’t still be asking the same question today: “What’s to become of the boy?” Perhaps there are times when weshould be asking it about elderly and successful politicians, church dignitaries, writers, et cetera.
2
So it is somewhat warily that I now enter upon the “realistic,” the chronologically confused path, wary of my own and other people’s autobiographical pronouncements. The mood and the situation I can vouch for, also the facts bound up with moods and situations; but, confronted with verifiable historical facts, I cannot vouch for the synchronization, as witness the above examples.
I simply don’t remember whether in January 1933 I was still or no longer a member of a Marian youth fellowship; nor would it be accurate if I were to say that I had “gone to school” for four years under Nazi rule. For I did not go to school for four years; there were, if not countless, certainly uncounted days when—apart from vacations, holidays, sickness, which must in any case be deducted—I didn’t go to school at all. I loved what I might call the “school of the streets” (I can’t say “school of the bushes,” since Cologne’s old town has little, and never had much, in the way of bushes). Those streets between the
Similar Books
