In January '36, the Hamburg shipbuilding company Blohm and Voss was commissioned to build a passenger ship for the German Labor Front and its subsidiary Strength through Joy, a ship slated to cost 25 million reichsmarks; no one asked where all that money was coming from. At first only statistics were available: 25,484 gross metric tons, a length of 208 meters, and a draft of 6 to 7 meters. The top speed was supposed to be 15.5 knots, and the ship was to carry a crew of 417 and 1,463 passengers. Those were normal figures for ships being built at the time, but in contrast to other passenger ships this new one was supposed to erase class distinctions for the present, having only one passenger class, which, according to Robert Ley s directives, was to set an example for the desired unity of the German Volk.
The plan called for naming the new ship after the Führer, but as the Reich chancellor sat next to the widow at the memorial service for the Party comrade murdered in Switzerland, he reached the decision that the KDF ship being built should bear the name of the movement's most recent martyr; accordingly, soon after Gustloff s cremation, public squares, streets, and schools were given his name. Even a plant that manufactured weapons and other military hardware, the Simson Works in Suhl, was renamed, after its compulsory Aryanization, so that the Wilhelm Gustloff Works might serve the cause of rearmament and, from '42 on, operate a branch in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
It would take too long to list all the other things named after him, so I shall mention only the Gustloff Bridge in Nuremberg and the Gustloff House serving the German colony in Brazils Curitiba. Instead I must ask myself the question, which I also posted on the Internet: “What if the ship whose keel was laid in Hamburg on 4 August 1936 had been named after the Führer after all?”
The answer came promptly: “The Adolf Hitler would never have sunk, because Providence would have…” Etc., etc. This reply set the following train of thought in motion: in that case, I would not have been forced to skulk around as the survivor of a disaster forgotten by the whole world. If I had disembarked at Flensburg perfectly normally, and Mother had given birth to me there, I would not have been an exemplary case, and today would not provide any cause for quibbling.
“My Paulies something special!” Mother's standard phrase rang in my ears throughout my childhood. It was embarrassing when she rambled on in her broadest Langfuhr idiom to neighbors and even her Party collective about my special qualities: “From the time he was born, I just knew this kid was going to be real famous someday…”
Don't make me laugh! I know my limitations. I'm a run-of-the-mill journalist, who can do a decent job for short stretches. I used to have big plans — a book that I never got around to writing was supposed to be called “Between Springer and Dutschke” — but for the most part my plans stayed on the drawing board. Then Gabi stopped taking the Pill without telling me, was soon pregnant, undeniably by me, and dragged me off to City Hall to get married. Once the squalling baby was there and the future educator had gone back to her studies, it was clear as day to me: From now on, don't expect much. The best you can do is hold up your end as a house-husband, changing diapers and vacuuming. No more delusions of grandeur! What can you say about a guy who lets himself be saddled with a baby when he's thirty-five and losing his hair? Love? Forget about that till you're past seventy, and by then the parts will have stopped working anyway.
Gabriele, whom everyone called Gabi, wasn't exactly pretty, but she sure could turn a man on. She was the take-charge type, and in the beginning she thought she could spur me to adopt a more energetic gait — ”Why don't you tackle something with social relevance, like the arms buildup and the peace movement?” — and I managed to grind out a preachy piece on Mutlangen, the stationing of Pershing 2 missiles, and the sit-ins, which was well received even in halfway leftist circles. But then the oomph went out of me again. And at some point she must have decided I was a lost cause.
Gabi wasn't the only one; Mother, too, saw me as a typical failure. Right after the birth of our son, and when she had made her wish about his name known by telegram — ”Must call him Konrad” — she minced no words in letters to her friend Jenny: “What a fool! For this he went west? To let me down? Is this all he can deliver?”
She was right. My wife, who was ten years my junior, remained ambitious. She passed all her exams, became a secondary-school teacher, got tenure, while I stayed in my rut. The exhausting fun and games lasted not quite seven years; then it was all over between Gabi and me. She left me the apartment in Kreuzberg, with its coal stove and the stultifying atmosphere of that part of Berlin that nothing can dispel, and moved with little Konrad to Mölln in West Germany, where she had family and soon found a teaching job.
A peaceful little town, attractively situated on a lake, with the East German border nearby, to all appearances idyllic. That rather pretty part of Germany styles itself pretentiously “the Duchy of Lauenburg.” Like something from a bygone era. In travel guides Mölln is known as the “Eulenspiegel town.” And because Gabi had spent her childhood there, in no time she felt right at home.
But I continued to go downhill. Was stuck in Berlin. Kept my head above water doing hackwork for a wire service, writing the occasional feature article on the side — ”What's Green about Berlins International Green Week?” and “Turks in Kreuzberg” — for the Protestant Sunday Weekly. Other than that? A couple of relationships, more annoying than anything else, and parking tickets. Oh yes, a year after Gabi left, the divorce went through.
I saw my son Konrad only on visits, which meant not often and at irregular intervals. A boy in glasses who I thought was shooting up too fast, though in his mothers eyes he was doing fabulously in school, was gifted and sensitive. But when the Wall came down in Berlin and the border opened up near Mustin, just past Ratzeburg, the next town over from Mölln, Konny begged my ex to drive him to Schwerin right away — it was a good hour away — to see his Grandma Tulla.
That's what he called her. At her request, I assume. It didn't end with that one visit — unfortunately, I would have to say today. The two of them hit it off at once. Even as a ten-year-old Konny had a fairly precocious way about him. I'm sure Mother got him hooked on her stories, which of course weren't confined to the carpentry shop on Eisenstrasse in Langfuhr. She dredged up everything, including her adventures as a streetcar conductor during the last year of the war. The boy must have soaked it up like a sponge. Of course she also poured on the tale of the endlessly sinking ship. From then on, Konny, or “Konradchen,” as Mother called him, was her great hope.
Around this time she often drove to Berlin in her Trabi. She was retired by now, and seemed to have been bitten by the travel bug. But she really came only to see her friend Jenny; I was an afterthought. What a reunion! Whether in Aunt Jennys dolls house or in my hole-in-the-wall in Kreuzberg, all she could talk about was Konradchen, the joy of her old age. How nice that she had more time to devote to him, now that the Peoples Own Furniture Combine had been dismantled — with her assistance, by the way. She was glad to help the process along any way she could. Her advice was in demand again. As for her grandson, she had all sorts of plans.