Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [59]
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