She first met Dean on location in a movie called Kit und Co, taken from a Jack London novel.
"We were lovers," she said. "But only for the film, of course."
Renate was still married and Sasha was a little boy. Dean was married to Wiebke. But something stirred between them right away, perhaps friendship, Renate said. In 1975, she divorced Mr. Bayer, but she did not ever want to marry again.
"I lived without my husband and without Dean for almost seven years," she said. She did not want a star like Dean for a husband - she knew there would be problems. But it was somehow inevitable.
They were married on September 22, 1981, Dean's birthday; he wrote a song for her called "On the 22nd of September."
Now Renate pulled a large box of photographs towards her. Bending over it, the ritual began: the showing of photographs. Ruth Anna Brown had produced pictures from a trunk in Hawaii and Wiebke from her own archive and now Renate.
Leslie and I sat on the edge of his seat, looking at the box that had not been opened since Dean's death, according to Renate. She sat on the floor near the box and started pulling out pictures. Images of Dean spilled out on to the carpet as if he were a jack-in-the-box and only Renate could let him out. I sat beside her.
Pictures of Dean in performance. Pictures of Renate and Dean. Pictures of their wedding. For the wedding, Renate had worn a white dress and she carried white roses. Dean wore a suit. The wedding party was on a boat on the lake.
In the pictures, groups of people celebrated, toasting the radiant couple; he was fair and handsome, she was dark and beautiful. In one photograph, Dean wore a sailor hat cocked dashingly over one eye. He sat at the wheel of the boat. Renate gazed lovingly into his eyes, and her arms were clasped passionately around his neck. In another, Dean hugged a pig. "A wedding gift," Renate said, giggling. Then she grew serious.
"Three weeks after we were married Dean went to Beirut," Renate said now, no longer laughing. "Dean was an idealist."
Before they were married, she had accepted his need to put himself on the line for his beliefs. She understood Dean because she, too, believed. Like all educated East Germans, she spoke Russian. In working with the Soviets on The Life of Karl Marx, she came to understand them. With her whole heart she felt they were a friendly, peaceful race. In the Soviet Union, many people had lost their families in the War. The Soviet Union had lived through war in a way that Americans had never known upon their own soil, and the USSR would never want war again, she said.
"So many women are living alone because of wars; and have never found another husband," Renate said sadly.
Truly, Renate believed; she had also been passionate for Alexander Dubcek's Prague Spring, for socialism with a human face. So she understood his need to travel for the cause. When he went to Chile in 1983, though, she was scared and she begged him not to go. The death squads were rattling around like loose cannon and no one was safe. Renate begged Dean.
"Please, Dean. Don't go. Please!"
Before he left, he got into his car and drove all night to the Czech border to meet his friend Vaclav Nectar. There, Vashek handed him the master of a record Dean was to present to the brothers in Chile. In no-man's-land at midnight, the two rock stars embraced.
"Promise me you won't sing 'Venceremos'," Renate said when he got back from meeting Vashek and before he left for Chile.
"No, Renate, I cannot promise you. I am not going all the way to Chile to sing 'White Christmas'," Dean said.
* * *
The secret police grabbed Dean as soon as he arrived in Chile and he was informed that he could not work because he had no permit; he said he was not working for pay, only bread, so he didn't need a permit. He strode into the union hall that was filled with his comrades who had paid a loaf, if they could, to see him sing.
Fist raised, Dean jumped on to the stage and the striking workers from the copper mines began to clap for him. Their wives and their kids clapped. Striking his guitar with one hand, the other held in a clenched fist, Dean sang "Venceremos," the anthem of the revolution. No one had dared sing this patriotic song since Allende's death; everyone in the hall stood. Everyone began singing, raising their fists for Dean and for liberty. Outside the hall, the security men prowled, their weapons ready, waiting for him.
Dean spoke to the crowd in Spanish. A woman put a pendant that had belonged to her dead husband around his neck. In Santiago the next day, Dean sang "Venceremos" again, this time to a group of university students who had never heard it before, because they were too young.
Dean was arrested and deported, although there were some who said he bought his ticket out with the American Express card Paton Price had given him for emergencies. While Dean was in Chile, a filmmaker he knew recorded everything. Now, in Schmockwitz, Renate put the video on and the scene played in front of us.
Renate was scared when Dean went to Chile, of course, but by and large, they were happy. Dean made her happy. He even whistled at her when she was especially pretty; in Germany it was an insult when a man whistled at a woman, but she understood that for an American it was a compliment. They had holidays in the mountains together and she helped him prepare his television shows. She coached him in German. They went skiing. Dean adopted Sasha. He offered, but he never pushed.
"I would like Dean to be my father," said Sasha and, after a while, he took Dean's name.
Looking up at the video, Renate smiled at another image of Dean. He was on a dirt bike, which he rode standing up, playing his guitar.
"He really was crazy," she said fondly.
After they were married, Renate gave up a good deal of her own work; she had a more important role: it was her role to be there for Dean when he came back from his many trips, to entertain his friends and comrades.
Life was fulclass="underline" Dean performed at concerts and he made movies. His friends from America came to visit, among them Paton Price, who stayed for six months in order to act as Dean's advisor on Sing Cowboy Sing, a cowboy spoof.
It was shot in Romania because Romania was a terrific double for the Old West, the landscape was rugged and there were barely any television aerials in the Romanian countryside. Paton hated the food. A million East Germans saw Sing Cowboy Sing.
Like a fond mother hen, Renate indulged Dean when his Americans came, for she knew that he missed his own language and its jokes. When Phil Everly was at the house, they carried on like little boys, horsing around together. At a concert at Karl Marx-Stadt, Dean and Phil played "Bye-Bye Love" together, just as Phil and Don had once done.
"How did you come to play with Dean in East Berlin?" I had asked Phil Everly in the Mexican restaurant in California.
"He just got in touch and invited me," Phil said.
"What was it like with Dean in East Berlin?" I asked.
"We played some concerts. We had a lot of laughs. Dean was a real joker. He got me an interpreter, a lady who was one of only twelve Mormons in East Germany. There was nothing to buy, I mean how much caviar can a fellow eat? So I bought some diamonds, but they weren't much good. But Dean loved it."
I remembered that Phil had found East Berlin depressing.
"In fact, it had me scared when I got off the plane," Phil had said. "Of course, Dean was on the other side. Dean was so popular then, so well known that the treatment once you got in there was phenomenal. The fact that you were coming there to see them. But I was scared until I saw him. I told him that, too."
Dean took him to the Stadt Hotel, the best in town. Phil remembered, "The first room I had was so narrow, maybe as spoiled American that I am. You had to see it to believe it. And I told Dean. I said, 'I can't stay here two weeks.' Dean got me to a corner room, which was twice as big, and got me one of the two televisions in that hotel. You could see West Berlin television, so I watched Bonanza. In German, you know? But it was so American, I loved it. One thing is sure," Phil added. "Renate sure did love Dean. Some mornings, when he got up to go to the movie studio around six, she got up even earlier, drove her car down the road and waited, so she'd be there to wave him off to work."