Tokala knows the man won’t fire, knows they cannot prevent his escape. He doesn’t have to do anything, simply tips forward, and feels Waziyata seize him and press against his chest.
For a moment it takes his breath away. The raging, blustering wind is so loud that no other sound reaches his ears, not even the rumble of the plane.
Abandoning himself to the wind he had closed his eyes, but now he opens them, and sees the lakes and forests that were his life draw ever nearer.
He understands how he is one of the chosen few, those who shortly before death are granted witness to the beauty and immensity of creation, not simply to see it, but feel it in their body and soul, and, amidst such beauty and immensity, acknowledge how small and insignificant human life is. This comforts him, as nothing ever has before, not even his mother’s breathing when he was still an infant. The acknowledgement of how miniscule, how ugly, he really is, and that it doesn’t matter because, in spite of everything, he is a part of this all-encompassing beauty and immensity.
This is what he thinks; feels; knows, and with a smile on his face and the wind in his hair, he crashes onto the hard surface of a secluded forest lake.
And that is the moment he receives his new name.
Mitakuye Oyasin.
We are all one.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction, which means the vast majority of it is simply invented. There was not, for instance, a Luisenhöhe estate near Marggrabowa/Treuburg, just as there was no Mathée schnapps distillery or products. Nor did any of the events related in this novel occur on the Elisenhöhe estate (which served as the model for its fictional counterpart) or, indeed, in the city of Treuburg. Any similarities with living or dead people are, therefore, entirely coincidental. Of all the Treuburg citizens appearing in the story, only the district administrator and mayor do so under their historically documented names.
There was never a Masurian Indian called Artur Radlewski, and, though Masuria is rich in lakes and moorland, the little lake, and the Kaubuk’s impregnable patch of moor in the forest near Markowsken (which is today called Markowskie) exist in my imagination alone. The same is not true of the military cemetery, however, which is still to be found today, next to the road leading into Markowskie.
Likewise, it’s a fact that as early as 1928, that is to say before the onset of the Nazis’ wave of Germanisation, Marggrabowa changed its name to Treuburg. Anti-Polish and anti-German resentments on both sides of the East Prussian border were all too real. Sadly, it is also true that the Masurians, who ever since 1920 had been connected with the German Reich by a transit route that passed through Poland, the so-called Polish Corridor, felt abandoned by the Reich and its governments and, in the spring of 1932, acclaimed Adolf Hitler as though he were the saviour. The man, who in time, would become the death of their culture.
Also historically documented are the events which took place at Berlin Police Headquarters on 20th July 1932, the arrest of the Social Democrat Police Commissioner Grzesinski and the entire police executive. If not for the reactionary Reich government’s suppression of Prussian democracy and the Berlin police force, it is doubtful whether the Nazis would have seized power with quite such ease six months later.
Large parts of this novel are set in a world which has ceased to exist. The old Masuria, in which Polish and German cultures coincided with others, and achieved a happy symbiosis, was crushed between the millstones of Nationalism; between Germanisation and Polonisation. Masuria’s multi-ethnic culture, which could have served as a bridge between the cultures of Germany and of Poland, sadly had no place in a world enslaved by nationalist mania.
Have you read the rest of the Gereon Rath series?
1929: There is seething unrest in Berlin. When a car is hauled out of the Landwehr Canal with a mutilated corpse inside Detective Inspector Gereon Rath claims the case. Soon his inquiries drag him ever deeper into the morass of Weimar Berlin’s ‘Roaring Twenties’ underworld of cocaine, prostitution, gunrunning and shady politics.
‘Gripping evocative thriller set in Berlin’s seedy underworld during the roaring Twenties. A massive hit in its native Germany.’
1930: Silent movie actress Betty Winter is killed on set after a lighting system falls on her. Inspector Gereon Rath suspects sabotage, possibly worse. Meanwhile, the murder of a Nazi named Horst Wessel leads to street riots and Rath’s relationship with Charlotte Ritter is on the rocks. Then another actress is found dead, this time with her vocal cords removed…
‘Conjures up the dangerous decadence of the Weimar years, with blood on the Berlin streets and the Nazis lurking menacingly in the wings.’
1931. Abraham Goldstein, a professional hit man, arrives in Berlin. Inspector Gereon Rath is assigned to keep him out of action – a boring job when the city’s department stores are being robbed, an underworld power struggle is playing out, and Nazi brownshirts are patrolling the streets.
‘Tough, gritty and altogether superb, Goldstein is a worthy addition to the addictive Gereon Rath series.’
Praise for the Gereon Rath series
‘Kutscher successfully conjures up the dangerous decadence of the Weimar years, with blood on the Berlin streets and the Nazis lurking menacingly in the wings.’
‘Gripping evocative thriller set in Berlin’s seedy underworld during the roaring Twenties.’
‘Babylon Berlin brings a fresh perspective to images and material that might otherwise seem shopworn, and its frenetic rhythms are particularly apt for a moment when we appear to be dancing our own convulsive tango on the edge of a fiery volcano.’
‘If you like crime, historical or translated fiction, this gives you all three.’
‘James Ellroy fans will welcome Kutscher’s series, a fast-paced blend of murder and corruption set in 1929 Berlin. Kutscher keeps the surprises coming and doesn’t flinch at making his lead morally compromised.’
‘The novels on which the dramas are based are even more rewarding than television’s slick production...’
About the Author and the Translator
Volker Kutscher was born in 1962. He studied German, Philosophy and History, and worked as a newspaper editor prior to writing his first detective novel, Babylon Berlin, the start of the award-winning series of novels to feature Gereon Rath and Charlotte (Charly) Ritter and their exploits in late Weimar Republic Berlin. The Gereon Rath series was awarded the Berlin Krimi-Fuchs Crime Writers Prize in 2011 and has sold over one million copies worldwide. A lavish television production of Babylon Berlin was first aired in 2017 in the UK on Sky Atlantic. Volker Kutscher works as a full-time author and lives in Cologne.