At the moment there’s an exhibition about tiled stoves in the Homeland House. Tiled stoves used to be our most important and beautiful exports. Another exhibition is also on, showing everyday items from the time of the German Democratic Republic: hair dryers, sewing machines, can-openers, what a People’s Police officer looked like, canned food, etc.
We don’t take any historical interest in tiles or everyday life in the GDR.
But we do take an interest in the massive wooden door in the cellar. There’s something about doors and cellars. Still intact, despite their age and the damp. We’re interested to know why so much fuss is made about that door. About the lock on that door. We take an interest in the room behind it. About six by six meters, asymmetrical walls of unhewn rock, more of a cave than a room. And during which war did old Lutz hide people in there?
We don’t take any interest in historical accuracy.
And we don’t know much about the room in the cellar. It’s some kind of local history archive. But our History Society keeps a low profile about what exactly is in that archive. Now that is interesting. It’s as if you were collecting something but not telling anyone what. So either you’re ashamed of it, because you’re a fifty-year-old engineer nicking and hoarding, let’s say, used tubes of lip gloss, or it’s forbidden to collect what you’re collecting, for instance because it’s threatened with extinction, like some species of monkeys and so on.
Members of the History Society, that’s to say the Committee of Friends of the Homeland House, are: Frau Kranz, Frau Schwermuth, Imboden, Zieschke the baker, the bell-ringer and, until recently, the ferryman. We’d know even less about the archive if Frau Schwermuth didn’t sometimes talk proudly about it, and if something wasn’t exhibited upstairs from time to time.
We first heard about it in 2011. Frau Schwermuth applied to the community, as represented by the Mayor Frau Zink, to authorize the purchase of an electronic lock for the massive wooden door and a device to regulate humidity in the cellar. There was talk of a “sensational historical find” that the History Society wanted to keep suitably safe and sound. Part of it was documents that wouldn’t even be regarded as lost because no one had known that they existed. Examination of them had apparently already begun, and it was hoped that the papers could soon be made accessible to the public and to scientific research. Frau Schwermuth called the archive then being set up the Archivarium.
The Mayor wasn’t the right person to apply to, but of course she turned up at once wanting to see the “sensational find.” Frau Schwermuth wouldn’t let her. Frau Zink was first amused and then upset to discover that it wasn’t a joke. Frau Schwermuth said she was sorry, but she couldn’t let just anyone in to see it. What did she mean, just anyone — and so on; Frau Zink was on the point of forgetting the dignity of her office, but then she asked to speak to the chairman of the committee, who was the ferryman at that time. They went into a room and talked privately for quite a long while. After that the community agreed to finance those two purchases.
The fact is that no catalog of the Archivarium exists, and to this day no public use for it has been found. Does the Museum of Brandenburg History know about the archive and the “sensational find,” and what does it think of them? From time to time Frau Schwermuth puts something on display in the glass case on the upper floor: an old lease, a marriage certificate. Or statistics: the quantities of fish caught in the year 1744, those from Fürstenfelde who died in this or that war.
In 1514 the feudal lord of the time, Poppo von Blankenburg, required four wethers a year from the shepherd appointed by the rural district council in consideration of his use of the meadows in Blankenburg’s possession.
We do take a little interest in the shepherd, but only because we like the idea of a shepherd appointed by the rural district council.
The Blankenburgs in general appeal to Frau Schwermuth as archivist: a document of a hundred years later records the purchase of an ox by the former feudal lord’s descendant, also Poppo von Blankenburg by name. Frau Schwermuth connected the record of the purchase with a letter of complaint about the sadly unedifying character of the said ox, rounding its story off with Blankenburg’s account of the truly remarkable end of the ox, which was driven to the Baltic and there fell from a cliff into the sea, history does not relate whether of its own accord or not.
We do feel a little historical surprise about that ox.
We take an interest in the fact that both documents are dated from the time before 1740 and the Great Fire. So they were preserved from the flames by a small miracle, and remained undiscovered until recently by a larger miracle.
We take an interest in the tooth of time. The tooth of time is not sharp in the cellar of the Homeland House. The document about the shepherd appointed by the rural district council shows no signs whatsoever of age; it is immaculate. Like all the other documents exhibited to date.
Now that, too, is interesting.
We are more inclined to believe our reason, which tells us that those documents are remarkably clumsy forgeries, than to believe Frau Schwermuth, who says that the device for regulating humidity in the atmosphere is super and top-notch. The archivist says nothing to explain how the documents managed to stay in such good condition before the acquisition of the device.
Johanna Schwermuth interests us enormously in terms of human and criminal history.
EARLY IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1607, THE remarkable Discovery of a great Quantity of Pippins in the fallow Field on Geher’s Farm led to a Disputation concerning the rightful Owner of the said Fruits, and in Consequence the Ownership of the entire Field. Four Men had stated their Entitlement, three of them submitting documentary Evidence, to wit a signed Agreement, in proof of their rightful Claim to have leased that same Field. The fourth, his Honor the high-born Poppo von Blankenburg, had no Document to show, notwithstanding which he challeng’d the others in a loud, insistent Manner to a Bout of Fisticuffs, in order to decide upon the Matter — namely, to the Effect that he who was the Last left standing be declar’d Owner of the Apples.
Not three Days after that Challenge, the Mayor, a bankrupt Schoolmaster, determin’d, albeit amidst great Indignation and Protestations, that the Fist-Fight be deem’d a proper Method of reaching a Verdict.
Poppo von Blankenburg struck down All concern’d, including the Mayor, and was ajudged to have Carried the Day. That same Evening he wax’d roaring Drunk, ran out into the Field intending to Embrace the same, fell, struck his Head upon a Rock, and expire’d of that Injury.
Therefore the fallow Field laps’d into the Wilderness of its unknown Origin again, in which Condition it bringeth forth Wasps, and Coneys, and wild Roses Year after Year, only to engulf and consume them once again.
MY MA WEIGHS TWICE AS MUCH AS MY PA. SHE weighs 130 kilos. In spring she puts on another 30 kilos of weighty thoughts (worries, fears, shame and general listlessness). Then my 160-kilo Ma lies down among the daffodils in the garden, because when she is lying down the dark clouds are about 160 centimeters farther away. Her eyes are closed, and we’re supposed to leave her alone. There’s nothing any of us can do about that, as a husband or a son or a daffodil. It’s impossible to get my 160-kilo Ma back on her feet if she doesn’t want to stand on them, it’s impossible to get her to cheer up if she doesn’t feel like it.
If it gets colder in the evening we cover her up. We sit with her. In fact it’s almost nice for all the family to be doing something together. Pa is busy with DIY of some kind, I’m preparing for our next role-play meeting (I’m going to be a thieving half-elf, good at fencing and flight). Demographically, my hobbies ought to be first-person shooter games and right-minded ideas, but neither of those is as cool as the role-playing.