585 “The legend”: “She proved capable of disciplining enemies of the new republic with unrelenting severity”—Steding (Sorgenicht); Hau-Bigelow, p. 9 (abridged and reworded).
586 West German journalist: “Who has ever once experienced this woman…” —Benjamin Stasi file, p. BStU 00051 (Die Welt, 15.8.52, Wolfgang Weinert, “Ob schuldig oder nicht schuldig”).
587 Information on the 1953 uprising—Peterson, p. 3.
587 “The General Prosecuting Authority, headed by the prosecutor general of the GDR…” —Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 6, p. 315 (entry on the German Democratic Republic).
588 “The legend”: “Her most important trials are known, and need not be mentioned further.” —Steding (Sorgenicht); Hau-Bigelow, p. 9.
588 Stasi evaluation: “Comrade BENJAMIN is from the professional and political standpoint…”—Benjamin Stasi file, p. BStU 00055.
589 Comrade Gotthold Bley: “Socialist law and socialist legislation were tools, motors and levers she used”—Steding (Bley); Hau-Bigelow, p. 12.
589 Comrade Büttner: “She solidified the dialectical interrelation between law and society…”—Steding (Horst Büttner, “Keeping the Revolutionary Achievements and Experiences of Coming Generations Alive”); Hau-Bigelow, p. 18. (The original, which does refer specifically to her work as Justice Minister in those years, runs: “She solidified the inseparable connection and dialectical interrelation between law and society…”)
589 Purpose of GDR justice: “Smash the resistance of expropriated monopolists for all time…”—Somewhat after Hans Werner Schwarze, The GDR Today: Life in the “Other Germany,” trans. John M. Mitchell (London: Oswald Wolff, 1973, trans. of orig. 1970 German ed.), p. 41.
589 Benjamin: “Only here in the German Democratic Republic have we learned the lessons of the past”—Benjamin (Pielhoop), p. 5.
590 “On 28.1.54 it came to our attention…”—Benjamin Stasi file, p. BStU 00040.
590 Gallows for Hilde Benjamin—Benjamin Stasi file, p. BStU 0004; newspaper clipping, 3.2.54: “Galgen für Hilde Benjamin.”
590 Rumor that Benjamin had fled toward Israel—Benjamin Stasi file, p. BStU 000031 (letter from Breitschneider, Oberkommissar, Leiter der Abteilung VI, to the Stasi, 2.3.54).
590 “There are three kinds of people here…”—Peterson, p. 257.
591 Description of Benjamin and Ulbricht at the military parade—Somewhat after a photo in Benjamin’s Stasi file, p. BStU 000227, Spiegel, Mittwoch, 18.3.59, p. 28 (“SOWJETZONE: Recht: Zwischen Recht und Rot”); the reproduction is poor, and I cannot tell whether the male figure is really Ulbricht.
593 Photographs in Benjamin’s office, including the likeness of “that representative of the international workers’ movement, Felix Dzherzhinsky”—An accurate list, and F. D., founder of the hated Cheka, is truly described in this way; in Steding (Büttner), original p. 55; Hau-Bigelow, p. 17.
593 Description of Red Guillotine in the courtroom—After Benjamin’s Stasi file, p. BStU 000220, Spiegel, Mittwoch, 18.3.59, p. 22 (“SOWJETZONE: Recht: Zwischen Recht und Rot”); some details invented (for instance, in the poor reproduction of the newspaper photo I couldn’t see whom the busts represented; very possibly Stalin’s was gone by this stage; Pieck, Lenin or Marx could have been the subject).
595 Benjamin: “This sentence is a warning for all who waver…”—Benjamin Stasi file, p. BStU 000015; p. 10.
597 Programmatic Declaration: “Our laws are the realization of human freedom” —Benjamin (Pielhoop), p. 7.
597 Comrade Bley: “Based on the teachings of Lenin, she envisioned a necessary direction for the workers’ and farmers’ movement in socialist legislation”—Steding (Bley); Hau-Bigelow, p. 12.
597 Honecker: “Only a shambles was left of Adenauer’s ‘policy of strength’”—Op. cit., p. 213.
598 Tale of Benjamin’s forced retirement—Benjamin Stasi file, p. BStU 000178, Haupt-abteilung XX/1/I, Berlin, den 19.6.67.
598 Description of the restricted area where Benjamin, Ulbricht and other privileged Party members lived—Carola Stern, Ulbricht: A Political Biography, trans. and adapted by Abe Farbstein (New York: Praeger, 1965; n.d. for orig. German ed.), p. 196.
599 “Seventy-five percent of our judges in the regional and district courts derived from the working class [by 1967]”—GDR: 300 Questions, p. 67.
599 “To be remembered here is her impartiality…”—Steding (Sorgenicht); Hau-Bigelow, p. 9.
599 Statistics on farms and industrial enterprises confiscated in East Germany (actually by 1974)—Great Soviet Encyclopedia, loc. cit., p. 316.
599 The prank calls about the coffin—Benjamin Stasi file, p. BStU 000191, Haupt-abteilung XX/1, Berlin 12.8.71. I have altered this incident substaantially.
In Berlin in 2003, Juliane Reitzig, a pretty woman in her twenties, answered my questions about growing up in the DDR as follows: “School was very military-like. You had to show effort, you know. It wasn’t like, here’s a little book about the bees and you know what. It was very political. In third grade they were already introducing us to the documentaries about the Holocaust. The Americans were our enemies and the Russians were our friends, of course. The Nazis were bad, of course. We the Communists, we were the good people. There wasn’t any talk of Eastern Germans being involved in Nazis. It was always the West Germans who were the bad ones… They were encouraging us to have pen pals. I was excited, but at the same time they were checking to be sure that we were really writing letters. They would organize holidays if we were making an effort. They would organize trips to Russia… There were a lot of people who had more than others, especially those who were in the SED, the Party. Everybody had a job. Everybody had a place to live. But it was a planned economy… My parents, they told me that they had applied to leave for the West, they said, don’t tell anyone, but I told my best friend, and her grandfather was actually working for the Stasi. There were rumors, and later on they found out he was there for sure. I never really went back to where I used to live. I have a dislike for that man, and also for other people who were very directly involved in that politics… Most people wanted the reunification.” Juliane did not immediately recognize the name Hilde Benjamin. About the destruction of Dresden she said, “I really don’t know all the historic details beyond the bombing, but there was a regime in power that needed to be stopped.”
601 Epigraph—“Everywhere that Torah is studied at night…”—Matt, p. 90 (“The Hidden Light,” from zohar 2, 213-14).
602 “My dear lady, thank you for your, your, you know, but I, I, well, I simply took a simple little theme and I did my simple, simple best to develop it!”—Grossly exaggerated from Wilson, p. 325 (testimony of Evgeny Chukovsky: Shostakovich on the First Cello Concerto).
611 Epigraph: “There is something fearful…”—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches (New York: Library of America, 1982), p. 402 (“Monsieur du Miroir,” rev. version of 1846).
In various stories, especially this one and “Opus 110,” descriptions of Dresden before its destruction are based on the text and photographs (which are labeled with such helpful indicators as “zerstört, später abgebrochen”) in Fritz Löffler, Das alte Dresden: Geschichte seiner Bauten (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann Verlag, 1999, repr. of 1995 ed.). A few details of Dresden in the 1960s derive from Jean Edward Smith, Germany Beyond the Walclass="underline" People, Politics… and Prosperity (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979, rev. of 1967 ed.). This author visited Dresden in 1967.