Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [60]
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 that 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