I Sleep in Hitler's Room (43 page)

“I am an old, stupid German, but there are things I know. The Germans unite the five senses, all at the same time, when they drink wine: Touch the glass. Look at the color. Smell the wine. Drink it. Hear the wine.”

Thus Gottfried holds forth.

Hear the wine?

Instead of answering me, Gottfried has his waiters prepare three different wines in three identical glasses. Then he delivers his Sermon on the Table for me:

“The father of all wines is Burgunder, a pure wine, which is identical with Bach—Father of Music.

“Riesling, the king of German wine, is identical with Mozart—King of Music.

“Traminer, wine full of power, is identical with Beethoven—Father of Gods.”

Every glass is drunk to a different music. That’s how we “hear” the wine.

He concludes his Teaching by saying, “To think in a deep way, to dig to the bottom, that’s German.”

You don’t believe it’s true? Think again. Here is what Gottfried inscribed on the front side of this establishment, right above this fabled restaurant’s name:

“Schöne Frauen, die macht der Herrgott allein, schöne Häuser aber und Wein müssen von Menschenhand geschaffen sein” (Beautiful women are made by God, but nice houses and good wine must be created by man).

As I eat a delicious dinner in this five-hundred-year-old house, Gottfried draws a number of circles on a piece of paper. The circle in the middle, he explains, is Germany. In his words: “We are in the middle. Not hot like the south, not cold like the north. Middle. Bach could come only from us. We, the Middle Europe people, have controlled manners. That’s German.”

Meißen’s got a Meißen, the famed porcelain company. They don’t think of women and wine, like Gottfried. They think PC. There is this big sign at the entry, announcing to the world that “All Nations are Welcome.” A little note on top: “Restaurant Meissen, täglich geöffnet ab 11.00 Uhr” (Meissen Restaurant opened daily from 11:00 am).

Once inside, and once you feel welcomed, you can buy stuff. Items sold here are between 39 to 100,000 euros. Whatever your nationality, they’ll accept your 100,000 euro.

It’s a beautiful store, granted. The riches here shout loud and proud.

Too many opposites in Saxony. Can anybody to me this Saxony?

Maybe Stanislaw Tillich, Saxony’s prime minister. I go to meet him. But before I get to see His Highness, members of his staff have a chat with me. They tell me, though I never asked, that PM Tillich visited Israel just a few weeks ago.

Israel again? How do these Jews sneak in always, especially when least expected?

When I enter the PM’s chambers I ask him why he went to Israel and why now. He couldn’t do it before, he says, because “I was in the European Parliament for ten years, I was on the budget committee, and there people save money, they don’t spend it . . .” This man, obviously, has a healthy sense of humor.

Why Israel? I ask.

“We have a long, long relationship with Israel. You know, I was born in the eastern part of Germany. We’ve learned a lot of things about Israel, but not the truth. We have learned two things, two definitions that the GDR used: There are two aggressors in the world. One is the US and the other is Israel. This is what I learned in the first years of my life. So I started reading about Israel, I read articles and books, and now that I am a PM it’s important to me to continue a relationship with Israel. And it was important for me to get my own impressions of Israel. For me it was really interesting because on my first evening, on the Mount of Olives, we met Germans working there to achieve better understanding between the West Bank and Israel.”

He goes on.

“For me, as a Christian, I didn’t understand why they have a wall in the only democracy in the Mideast. Why they use this instrument. I said to my partners from the Israeli side, You have to allow the Palestinians a chance to develop their own economy and to give them free movement. There should be, for the future, a better relationship between both sides.”

So, you’re a critic of the wall?

“I could understand, for security reasons, that the wall is OK. But, on the other hand, a wall does limit free movement.”

This goes without saying. I mean—

“I have seen different lines, which were agreed to by the Palestinian side, by international organizations, and by Israel. But now they develop different plans, how they build the wall. There are now islands in the West Bank, making it very difficult to go from one island to another island. For me it was understandable the first plan that I saw, to make a wall around the whole area. But now they start to make islands too, they make corridors because they go to the beach in the Dead Sea. Of this I am critical.”

The Israelis, perhaps you weren’t aware, strangle the poor Palestinians, deprive them of freedom, deny them the chance for economic viability, only because they feel like swimming in the Dead Sea.

Stanislaw is not the only one attending this very deep conversation. His press person is here as well. And, as the saying goes, he smells a rat. He’s paid to make sure his boss doesn’t make any mistakes. And right here, right now, he interjects. “Our issue today is a different one. I didn’t mean to interfere, but maybe we should go to—”

Reasonably enough, he wants to run away from the “Jewish” issue as one would from a blazing fire. We agreed beforehand that we’d be talking about Germany and Sorbs. But I tell him that no-Sorbs is actually more reasonable. I explain: If you go to the market to buy a banana and on the way you meet a beautiful girl, wouldn’t you go for the girl?

Stanislaw is laughing, he digs it. His press person, on the other hand, sees more red lights. Problem is, he’s not the boss. Sorry.

Why are Germans so obsessed with the Mideast?

“We live with our history. Normally we are friends of the Jewish people, because of the Holocaust. That’s why, on one hand I say, the state of Israel is our partner and our friend. But on the other hand we say, Why don’t they find a way to solve this long-existing problem? That’s two points. The third, I’d say, is that Israel is a key element in the Arab world, key for the future development of this region. We say, why don’t they find better ways to deal with it? Then, Israel is in the Arab world, which is very important. Israel is a key element. Each action that Israel takes against, for example, I don’t know—the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria—will always influence the balance of power in the world. Israel is a key element.”

He and Helge Schneider, I believe, should be sent to the Middle East to solve this conflict once and for all. Stanislaw will get the Israelis off the beach, Schneider will give the Arabs and the Jews 20 euros an hour and, boom, peace will take effect immediately. Then we could even transfer the Rose Garden from Marxloh to Jerusalem, raise up two fingers, peace and love, and the German people would finally stop worrying about the Palestinians and everybody would have a good night’s sleep.

Stanislaw goes on and on. His press person can’t stop him. That’s it, the boss wants to talk. It’s almost half an hour since we began, and Stanislaw is on the ride of his life. The man talks. He’s on automatic. He tells me about a book he read, he explains to me intricate political ideas, and he seems to be very proud of himself. He’s proud and I’m happy. Yes, really. I am happy that a German PM tells me that he has no choice but to love me, the Jew, because his family killed my family. That’s real love. I feel embraced. Desired. Maybe the whole Holocaust was actually worth it. I wouldn’t get this love otherwise. Things are going well for me. I think I’m going to get a tattoo on my forehead. It will consist of one word:
Jew
. Maybe a little yellow patch on my shirt as well. I’ll walk the streets of Germany and everybody will love me. Young men will shower me with gifts, young ladies with kisses. My grandpa, let me tell you in confidence, was Jewish. Honest. I feel so German suddenly.

The PM talks on and on and I’m dreaming and dreaming. And when I dream of the German masses kissing me, all of a sudden Duisburg enters my mind. Adolf Sauerland!

Should Sauerland resign? I ask His Highness.

“Mr. Sauer, Sauermal, Sauerland,” says Mr. Highness, “gave the right answer. He said that if he goes now it would be a failure of responsibility.”

Stanislaw’s p.r. man looks at his watch, constantly. The interview time was set at thirty minutes, time long gone. I have pity on this man and move on to ask the questions I said I’d ask.

What does it mean to be German?

“The German is curious. You’ll see it, because the Germans are world champions in traveling. On the other hand, in technology, for example in genetics, they are also curious but they are not willing to take risks. Oh, they say, this could hurt my eyes . . .”

Stanislaw illustrates what Germans are: They take the plane and they ask the pilot, Is it true that it’s taking off? Will it land as well? They want to cross the river from one bank to the other but without leaving the first bank. That’s the Germans.

“They are constantly worried.”

At this Stanislaw points to the chandelier in the room: “We changed to energy-saving bulbs, but now we’re discussing if the material in the bulb might hurt the environment . . .”

On the bright side, he says, Germans are good in engineering, and “I think that they are proud of their history too. The Germans really like classical music,” for example. Then he points at another Good Quality of the Germans and relates what usually happens in book fairs, how thousands come to listen to authors reading their new books.

Stanislaw, a man with a foxy smile, is a Sorb. I never met a Sorb, at least not knowingly, and I ask him to explain to me who the Sorbs are.

But before he talks about Sorbs he wants to tell me something about . . . Israel. Again. I thought we’d done with that, that we already said good-bye to that part of the conversation. But no. He learned something in Israel, he says, and he’s got to share it. What is it? What’s the Emergency? Well, before going to the Middle East he didn’t think that the absence of peace was the fault of the Israelis. Good. But what new thing did he learn? That as long as Israel has the Islands, as he calls them, there won’t be peace.

Never occurred to me that the Sorbs, too, are obsessed with Israel and the Jews. But I’ve really had enough of the Jews. Let’s move on!

Tell me, I beg of him, about the people of Saxony and about the Sorbs.

Saxons, he says, are more open-minded and greater risk takers. Saxons “are proud of each stone outside their home, river, or lake.”

And the Sorbs?

“We’ve been living together with the people of Saxony for more than a thousand years. There are a lot of differences. The main difference is that Sorbs don’t know the word
enemy
. It doesn’t exist in our language.”

As we depart, I tell him that I’m thinking of going to Görlitz. He tells me that I should. Visit the Holy Grave, he says. It is the exact copy of the one in Jerusalem.

Israel again . . .

Before going to Görlitz, I check to see what’s going on in this world, Germany.

“German rage over festival deaths focuses on mayor,” says the AP.

Under the headline “Deadly German Stampede Gets Its Villain,” the
New York Times
reports that “politicians around the country, newspaper and television commentators and many citizens of Duisburg are calling for Mr. Sauerland to resign.”

The
Deutsche Welle
reports that “Hannelore Kraft, state premier of NRW, has called on the lord mayor of the western German city of Duisburg to accept moral responsibility.”

I take time to reflect on Germany and the Germans.

I don’t know if this Adolf is guilty or not. Nor do I care. But the animosity, reaching a level of boiling bloodthirstiness, coupled with the vicious onslaught by the media, is strange to me. Convicting a man before all the facts are known is not the way of democracy, nor should it be. Why is it happening here?

A thought recurs to me: People in this society, contrary to what many of them claim, feel a deep need for an authority to follow. Not so unlike the last century, when they blindly followed Hitler. It’s in them to worship authority and to totally rely on it. This perception of the German, at least at this stage of my journey, is the only way for me to explain why they’re so keen for the blood of Adolf. It makes sense to me that a strong and faithful believer, one who has put all his faith in another and has deemed that other to be the utmost protector, can in his disappointment become so venomous when, as he feels, that authority has failed him. It’s this huge disappointment that turns blind obedience into an uncontrolled need for slaughter.