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Hans-Magnus Enzensberger once referred to Alexander Kluge, winner of every major prize for literature in Germany, as 'the least known of well-known German writers'. In his introduction to, and translation of, three of Kluge's short stories, Martin Chalmers reveals why this should be otherwise.
Alexander Kluge was born in 1932 in Halberstadt, a town whose history mirrored that of Germany in the twentieth century: once the site of one of the most beautiful synagogues in Europe - the local Jewish community was forced to pull it down with their own hands - eighty per cent of the old town was destroyed in an air raid in 1945. Later, in the time of the GDR, Soviet troops were garrisoned there. After studying law, Kluge's breakthrough as a writer came with the publication of Lebensläufe ('Curriculum Vitae') in 1962. He was the legal representative of Adorno and Horkheimer's 'Institute of Social Research' in Frankfurt and it was Theodor Adorno who introduced him to Fritz Lang, which was the beginning of a parallel career as film-maker. Even now, there is no sign of a pause in Kluge's industry and productivity. In 2000 Suhrkamp Verlag published the two volumes of Chronik der Gefühle ('Chronicle of Feelings') which not only collected and revised his earlier books of prose but added almost 1000 pages of new stories, largely written in the 1990s. Chronik der Gefühle was followed in 2003 by Die Lücke, die der Teufel lässt, an abridged version of which was translated as The Devil's Blind Spot: Tales from the New Century (New Directions, New York, 2004). In autumn 2006 came Tür an Tür mit einem anderen Leben ('Door to Door With Another Life'), Kluge's most personal book, and this spring (2007) Suhrkamp will publish Geschichten vom Kino ('Stories from the Cinema'), stories reflecting Kluge's work as a film-maker. While he has made no feature-length film since the 1980s, he continues to produce weekly arts and commentary programmes for TV in Germany and elsewhere, keeping open windows for debate, for thinking, in a commercialised media landscape. But whatever form the work takes, whatever medium he uses (and Kluge is certain that books - no matter what they may look like in the future - will last longest), the underlying aim remains the same: to allow space between the images, the stories and fragments, space for the viewer and reader to draw his or her own conclusions, to engage, to differ. In short, since the 1960s Kluge has not ceased to be concerned with the maintenance of a Gegenöffentlichkeit, a counter-sphere of thought and potential action to a homogenised reality. Alexander Kluge asserts an anti-realism to the claim that there is no alternative to the way we live now. He is at one with the Grimms' Town Musicians of Bremen, in alliance with donkey, hound, cat and cockerel, whose masters wished to slaughter them when their utility was at an end. Like the would-be musicians he believes there is always something better. Alexander Kluge, the most important contemporary heir to Brecht and Benjamin, Bloch and Adorno, was seventy-five in February this year. A Treasure in China I was never allowed to talk about how, at the end of March 1945, before the arrival of the advance guard of the Red Army, my father buried parts of the fortune of the extended family (porcelain, silver, two large bags, travel documents) under the apple trees in the garden and laid down a compost heap on the spot, which did very well in the rainy weather. I never said a word about it, although I received a Communist training and was required to reveal all personal secrets. There is a private human being inside every Chekist. I can, however, confirm that this private human being is not the well-source, where behaviour and character have their engine (seat of reliability), it is to be found rather in a side gallery, where society does not reach. Thus I remain an absolutely reliable Party cadre, who has merely not betrayed a family hiding-place (and also does not dig it up). There must be forgetting, otherwise there are no escape routes in an emergency. The modern patriot is a complex product. A thinking, active product. We wanted to get intelligence material, also parts of the Party assets to safety in the People's Republic of China. Chests and accounts were already en route to our embassy in Beijing, when we learned that the People's Republic of China would respond to a possible confederation of the GDR with the Federal Republic of Germany by merging its two embassies. The People's Republic recognises no separate property, not even that of a friendly brother state or a brother Party, once these lose their official status. In the short time until March, and after that until incorporation into the Federal Republic, we did not find any definitive solution. In June, when we lost our offices and telecommunications equipment, the containers, which we had sent off at the beginning of the year, were in a transport loop on the territory of the People's Republic of China. They were transferred from State haulier to State haulier, re-registered, put on trucks again etc. Until 1992 the valuable objects moved from address to address, constituted a 'buried treasure'; finally the consignments came to the attention of the Chinese authorities and were seized. Today, lacking an owner, they are stored in warehouses near Beijing. It is impossible for the Chinese administration to dispose of the treasure without information from us. It will never get this information. Naked, As We Were On the day before the drawing up of the balance sheet for the changeover to West marks we had set out with four trucks and two escort vehicles. Our mechanics in one of the escorts kept the heavy trucks, full of ingots, intact on all the roads of the eastern Ukraine and North Ossetia. Marked on our maps was the Ust'urt Desert (on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, but from the 'road' this sea was nowhere visible, the desert appeared as steppe). We were trapped. Local officials (or bandit gangs with insignia unknown to us) forced us to drive to an abandoned caravanserai. We had weapons. But the number of armed men surrounding us and what the use of weapons would achieve was uncertain. Once a week 'representatives of the authorities' brought provisions to the isolated place. So we spent the Day of German Unity glued to transistor radios as a last collective of the GDR. The cold penetrated inside the vehicles. We did not want to sacrifice any fuel for heating. In spring we abandoned the vehicles. We buried the iridium ingots. After a march of 435 miles across two national frontiers we reported to the German Embassy in Teheran. We were twelve patriots. First we had tried the Embassy of the People's Republic of China and been turned away. At the German Embassy they did not want to give us passports of our new Fatherland right away. They demanded proofs of our existence. We, however, had nothing but our knowledge of German and labels sewn into our clothes, indicating where they had been bought. The GDR passports and our weapons, which could have proved our identity, we had buried in a panic one night during our flight. Should we have hurried back to this hiding place, merely to prove to Foreign Ministry officials that we were involuntary 'fellow citizens'? We lacked the elan of unshakeable conviction. When they got fed up feeding us in the relatively cramped accommodation in Teheran, they shipped us, by way of Aden and Port Said, to Rostock. As active Chekists we were used to assuming almost any desired identity. They, our enemies, had to believe us, 'naked', as we were. The Six-Year-Old In Me And The Starry Sky Above Me For structural reasons the conference hall was screened from the outside world. It was the only way a sufficient number of rooms could be strung together, with the result that not every room had windows. But, because of the milky afternoon light that filled the city, even through windows it would have been impossible to see the starry sky, although the stars at all times watch over us up there. The liveliest speaker in this company was considered to be 'full of hot air'. None of those present thought much of the others. A room of indifference. I'm older than the others. Inside me I hear the six-year-old, whom I once was and who I am at every point of my life. Often the seventeen-year-old or the thirty-two-year-old speak inside me, too. But they rarely speak at the same time, whereas the objections of the six-year-old seem to fit with each of the other voices. If I close my eyes for a moment, it can happen that I return to this room from an earlier time. I have an impression of having lived on a country estate in ancient Syria. And if this is true, I am also living now, even as I explain myself at this conference, in this other time. Is it dear to me? Would I remember it, if it were not dear to me?
Stories taken from: Alexander Kluge Chronik der Gefühle, vol. I, Basisgeschichten (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2000) and Tür an Tür mit einem anderen Leben (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006). Translations, Martin Chalmers.
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