Hannes or The foreign Land E-Book

Wolf Kunert

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 252

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Hannes was an idiot! This is how this now old man describes himself. He approaches his unknown country with his alter ego, the author. "Hannes or the foreign country" is a journey through the life of a man that began in the former GDR. It is a journey full of emotions and captivating experiences and memories. Growing up in the GDR and then spending the second half of his life in the West, Hannes remembers his mistakes, collisions and love. His move to the united Germany was not always smooth and trouble-free either. With the help of the author of this book, he gradually manages to ask the questions that he did not want to think of at the right time or that he perhaps wanted to avoid. Hannes, a person with weaknesses and strengths, is on a search that is initially not clear to him where it will lead him. Nothing in his life is actually as it seems to him so far. Together with his alter ego, he sets out to discover his foreign country. Will the search bring him to his destination and is this how he imagined the country? Hannes' life is a story that spans countries, marked by hope and despair, political challenges, gradual self-discovery and the courage to face the unknown. The author skillfully knows how to find a balance between an exciting contemporary document and personal fate. The story draws you in from the first page and doesn't let you go until the last sentence. He gradually builds up the tension and suspense of his protagonist. Until the reader learns that this foreign country will probably not be found on any map. The book "Hannes or the Foreign Land" is not a search for guilt, but for the causes of deeply felt ruptures in a person's life.

Leseprobe

Wolf Kunert

Hannes or The foreign Land

Hannes

or

The foreign Land

Novel

Dedicated, as always

And always to the same one

The people in this book, as described here, have never existed.

© 2024 Wolf Kunert

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tredition GmbH, Heinz-Beusen-Stieg 5, 22926 Ahrensburg, Germany

Das Werk, einschließlich seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Für die Inhalte ist der Autor verantwortlich. Jede Verwertung ist ohne seine Zustimmung unzulässig. Die Publikation und Verbreitung erfolgen im Auftrag des Autors, zu erreichen unter: tredition GmbH, Abteilung "Impressumservice", Heinz-Beusen-Stieg 5, 22926 Ahrensburg, Deutschland

"Is there a world to imagine, a time that I would fit into. No one to ask. That is the answer."

Christa Wolf, Medea

1

Hannes was an idiot. Those aren't my words. He himself said that about himself once. Perhaps not in the pathological sense, he added. He belonged more to the inconspicuous of his kind, after all, he was still free to move among us.

In essence, Hannes even possessed something like charm, which made him appear likable to the majority of people in his surroundings. Even as a child, he was quite popular with older ladies. They appreciated him for his respect and the politeness he showed them. He tried to make himself popular with them, as he later did with his classmates and then with his friends. That was his way of dealing with people. But he had a deficit from an early age.

We met on our walks, Hannes and I. We greeted each other when we met, and one day we started talking to each other about this and that. Insignificant everyday pleasantries. Dogs bring people together. His dog and mine knew and accepted each other. If the four-legged ones like each other, usually their two-legged ones do too. After all, only good people have friendly dogs. We succumbed to this concise conclusion as well.

Almost naturally, we ended up ultimately completing our walks together. While our dogs secured their territory sniffing and marking, we talked about everything under the sun. We sniffed each other out, so to speak, in the manner of humans.

We were both of retirement age and could manage our time as we pleased. One of the blessings of our age. Hannes explained that I tended to be lazy and probably wouldn't ensure regular exercise without the dog. Sports were never really my thing. Much to my daughter's annoyance. She occasionally scolds me for it. But everyone lives according to their own beliefs. Even if sometimes they're the wrong ones and you know it.

Initially, we met each other somewhat randomly. But over time, it became a dear habit to me. It felt good to spend time with pleasant conversation. It distracted from the daily grind and brought fresh air into the mind. We greeted each other, the dogs also completed their greeting ritual, and then we started our round. We talked about things that came to mind. For example, what we had come to appreciate about retirement.

When I retired three years ago, Hannes told me, I was afraid I might get bored. But now I've learned to fill the time. I'm reading more again. There are still some books on the shelf waiting for me, and my weblog deals with current issues, things that amuse or worry me. Nothing that changes the world, but I can process it for myself and draw conclusions. It's not in me to spend the day in front of the television. I start to get bored after just a few minutes.

Over the weeks, we got to know each other better. In old age, friendships are not formed so quickly. Experience has made one more critical. Also, the urge to proselytize is limited, wanting to impose one's opinion on others. The consequence of which is regularly dividing people into smart and dumb, depending on whether they follow one's own opinion or not.

We talked about retirement, which is never sufficient, current politics, which we mostly considered dilettantish nonsense, and of course about our dogs. Just the usual chatter. We've learned that the other person also has their own baggage to carry and, if possible, we don't want to burden them with ours.

Hannes lived alone like me and had only loose contact with his former family. In this, he shared the fate with me and other men when they no longer fulfilled their provider role. With the ex, one has closed the chapter. The children are grown up and have jobs. They live their own lives. If they are capable of doing so, at least you haven't done everything wrong. The price, however, is that they can spare only little time. I believe that's called the circle of life, Hannes added. Everything comes back to us. We hardly handled it differently in our younger years.

With time, we got used to each other. Friendship would be too big a word for it, but habituation fits perfectly. I mean that I started to look out for him when he was late or didn't come at all. As is probably inevitable at our age, we also began to talk about the past; the oh-so-good old days. Even though you know that it actually only refers to the time when you were more agile and had more hair on your head. There are people who make big plans for their retirement. I'm glad I can finally just go with the flow and don't have to plan anymore.

There are people, Hannes agreed with me, who are so busy organizing their lives that there is no time left for life itself. If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans, I read somewhere. On the other hand, Hannes added, when I look back on my aimless life: That's not necessarily worth emulating either. Perhaps the truth, as often, lies in the middle.

Regardless of what he talked about, he usually connected it with an anecdote or punchline. Behind it was probably a certain insecurity. It wasn't difficult for me to listen to him. Our topics didn't lend themselves to serious disagreement anyway. He had developed a typical old man's philosophy, which was quite similar to mine.

I got the impression that behind his stories was a life that didn't always follow a straight path. You can read a lot, but some things you have to experience yourself to really be able to judge about them.

If we hadn't seen each other for a few days, I missed the conversations. I was glad when he came and was doing well. Although we were still quite good with each other, at a certain age, you can't assume that it will continue like that in the future. That's just how it is. You're confronted with finiteness.

Did I ever tell you how I came to have a dog? I was on holiday in Denmark with my daughter, he continued without waiting for my answer. We were sitting in a restaurant having dinner. Then she boldly announced that she was old enough now to go on holiday with friends. I asked her what I should do then. And she replied, 'Well, you get yourself a dog, like all old men.' I was fifty at the time. I found the way she presented the suggestion amusing. But as you can see, the thought stuck. I got Bruno when he was still a puppy. He weighed just five hundred grams and fit comfortably in my hand. Now he's part of my life. We've grown old together, and if you calculate his age in dog years, he's long surpassed me. Looking back, it was one of her best ideas.

Whenever Hannes talked about his daughter, he had this sparkle in his eyes. You could tell she meant something special to him. But there was always a certain sadness too. As if there was something unsaid. I must admit, I wasn't ready back then to take on his problems. I knew too little about him. If, as an outsider, you get involved in family problems, you can quickly get caught in the middle.

He could still sit cross-legged on the sofa, Hannes changed the subject. He saw that as a good sign for his condition. It's only with exertion, climbing stairs and such, that he quickly runs out of breath. He's been a smoker since he was young. He started at twelve or thirteen and tried to quit twice in vain. Ultimately, he accepted it. After all, he's still as old as his grandfather. What more could he want! Every additional day is like a new family record.

It's a quirk of memories not to appear chronologically. I'm not good with times, he apologized. Sometimes I don't remember exactly when something happened. But I still know the details quite well. I probably have more of a photographic memory because I can see the images of the events quite clearly in my mind.

He rarely had contact with his daughter anymore, and when they did, it was mostly over the phone. She's an adult and manages her life in her own way. She has chosen her own path and her own philosophies, which don't always align with mine. In fact, quite rarely. That's just how it is with children. Eventually, it turns around, and then they want to explain to us how life is or should be. They've completely forgotten that they were once taught how to eat with a spoon. At least in stubbornness, we're both similar.

She likes to read and seems to be building her own library. That's not something you see every day nowadays," he added proudly. "It was my dream for a long time to eventually leave her my library. But then I realized that at best, you can inherit books, not libraries. Every time has its books, and every age has its literature, apart from the classics. Don't you think so?" "That sounds logical to me," I admitted. "Literature requires its temporal context. Language changes with the times, and I don't mean the prescribed guidelines. Interests change over the course of life, as well as knowledge and education. Even though I feel like subtleties and nuances in language are lost and give way to increasing ghettoization."

"Memories are inaccurate," Hannes returned to the topic. "If they're from a long time ago, we've smoothed them out and filled them with opinions to fit into our drawers. If they're still fresh, then they're filled with the feelings they triggered in us. Memories can't be trusted. They deceive us into believing in a past that never existed. Our lives are not made up of snapshots or short sequences. It's continuous. But memory only stores certain things, and negative experiences often overshadow all the beautiful and happy moments we've also had. Do we really define ourselves as humans only through experienced suffering? Isn't that sad? What kind of miserable life would that be?"

"But we've also experienced beautiful things. At some point, we found a four-leaf clover, admired a fly agaric mushroom in its splendor. Haven't we also loved and laughed? Have you ever been so captivated by the beauty of a woman that you fell out of the tram? I have. You see, and that's what should fill our lives and our drawers. Or not?" "Doesn't it do that?" I asked back. "You're just remembering it." "A good point," he admitted. "Somewhere I once read: “And I was so happy!' You say accusingly when your hope has been destroyed. You were happy – isn't that something?"

"Perhaps it's like with books," I interjected. "Some readers discover a completely different story than you or I, even though we've read the same thing. Memories behave similarly, I think. We compare them with our experiences and either discard them or draw the conclusions that suit us. Years later, we read the same story again and come to different conclusion.

Do you know that feeling when you read a book, and a single sentence sticks with you? Then you know it was worth reading the book. For me, it was Knulp. When God says to him, 'If I had wanted you to be different, you would have been different.' Unfortunately, I discovered the book rather late. Perhaps things would have turned out differently. But I finally found the sentence, and that alone is important. It helped me to accept myself as I am. I hope that doesn't sound too pathetic to you." "No, not pathetic, rather apologetic. That's just who I am, I can't change that. Accept it!

"A good argument, but I'm not talking about any fads, those shields that people carry nowadays to make attackers feel guilty. What I mean are the fundamentals you receive or don't receive during your childhood development.

"Take me, for example. I'm unable to recognize the emotions and intentions of other people. Only when they're completely open and clear do they become perceptible to me. Essentially, I'm incapable of seeing through a person's facade. What lies behind some kindness remains mostly incomprehensible to me. That hasn't changed throughout my life.

"The reason for this probably lies in my first months of life. Over the years, I've learned to accept that I'm solely responsible for my decisions, and they inevitably have consequences.

"My mother was just seventeen when I was born. She must have been a lively person who enjoyed her youth. So I came about during a dance break on a warm summer night. Immediately after my birth, I was handed over to an orphanage. Whether my mother decided that or my great-uncle, I could never find out.

"Apparently, she wasn't too young to work on my great-uncle's farm. But she wasn't allowed to care for me herself. The uncle needed her labor even that year during the harvest. The fact was, my mother was still considered a minor, and nearly a year passed until the legal arrangements regarding guardianship were clarified. Then my grandmother took the train to the little town in Holstein to bring me to her in Mecklenburg. Back then, you could still travel from one sector of the country to the other. I'm sort of a victim of the Stalin regime's deportation, Hannes joked. Do you know if there's any compensation for that?

"For me, the change to my grandparents came about a year too late. This time frame was enough to turn me into the idiot I remained for a lifetime.

"In hindsight, this formulation doesn't seem entirely unjustified to me. One must not forget how important this first year in a person's life is. In these few months, the foundation for social competence is laid, that is, the basic ability to assess other people and, when appropriate, to trust them. So Hannes never learned to allow real intimacy. What physical contact can trigger in terms of beauty remained closed to him for a long time. Developing unconditional trust in other people was also impossible for him. If there were problems, for example, in relationships or with friends, he exhibited pronounced avoidance behavior. He quickly felt betrayed and withdrew into himself.

"Did you know," Hannes interrupted my thoughts, "that it's not possible to learn to speak properly if you haven't learned it by the age of nine? We go through stages in our development that cannot be caught up later. The brain is a strange machine. On the one hand, it generates new synapses with every movement we make, and on the other hand, it's unable to catch up on certain things that are so important to us.

"Over time, I learned that people would eventually leave me or, worse yet, hurt me, even though I loved them. Conflict resolution or genuine empathy were practically nonexistent for me. Instead, I developed avoidance behavior in such situations. I retreat when a situation demands too much from me.

He lacked security, the physical and mental closeness that a parental home would have provided. The feeling of security and belonging of a family would have been crucial at that time. The physical contact that an infant so desperately needs, the beating of the mother's heart, and the familiarity of parental voices and faces, he hadn't experienced any of that. While it's said that everyone is the architect of their own fortune, we shouldn't forget that not everyone has learned to be an architect.

When Hannes was born, little was known about child psychology or healthy psychological development; neither the sisters in the orphanage nor his grandparents afterward. They mainly focused on physical well-being, which was more tangible. If he came home later crying because someone had hit him or teased him, his grandfather would ask, "What did you do to deserve your food? Defend yourself!" Perhaps in the orphanage, they were convinced that infants were not yet capable of interacting in any form.

Hannes told me that he had researched this topic on the internet, but found very little concrete information. There were different opinions, and one couldn't always be sure if the sources were well-founded and trustworthy.

The aforementioned orphanage was run as a religious institution and operated by sisters who were probably inexperienced and untrained in child psychology. They may have cared for the little ones to the best of their knowledge, but they likely knew little about the things that make a person beyond food and cleanliness. Hannes never spoke to me about guilt. As I said, he was still an infant. His mother had not spoken about that time. When she was angry with him, she made it clear to him that she never wanted him.

As soon as the little ones could stand up, they were strapped into their cribs for safety. So, while they could still rise to the gate when they were ready, playing with other children in the room was not possible. They probably learned to outshout each other to get attention from the sisters. This behavior was certainly not equally pronounced in all children. Some infants probably tended to retreat to a corner of their bed, while others reacted demandingly to the lack of attention. Similar to the behavior of newly hatched bird chicks. The one who cries the loudest gets the most food.

The phase of dropping and throwing toys was probably seen as disruptive to the daily routine by the sisters. Whether they saw it as a normal stage of development, I could only guess. It may have been interpreted as defiance and misbehavior. They certainly didn't have the time to nurture the children in this regard. That was purely impossible from an organizational standpoint. So, at that time, these institutions were likely raising socially impaired idiots without even realizing it.

Hannes later unconsciously tried to compensate for these deficits. His efforts to find or give closeness and warmth to other people made him a clown. As a child, he confused applause for his antics with sympathy or affection. The unfulfilled longing for closeness accompanied him throughout his life. Yet at the same time, he also feared it. He wasn't used to it and therefore mistrusted it.

However, if he did receive it, he would rather hurt the people who showed it to him before they could do the same to him. The fear of being abandoned and rejected has accompanied him to this day. Even as an adult, he felt uneasy when encountering people from his past. He always feared that he had wronged them without knowing why. He couldn't imagine that people genuinely liked him.

Hannes recalls; when he returned to the theater years later where he had worked, some of his former colleagues hugged him. They wanted to know what he was doing, how he was, and that they were glad to see him again. He hadn't expected that. After all, he was convinced that he had left some things unresolved. Apparently, the positive impression outweighed among his colleagues.

The problem with idiots like Hannes is that they absorb sympathy from other people like a sponge. If someone was willing to give it to him, and this often happened, he wanted it to stay that way. For this, he sometimes exaggerated his actions to excess. Eventually, people turned away from him disappointed. They felt betrayed and sensed that he was pretending something.

This happened repeatedly throughout his life. He had a blind spot in his perception. It's one thing, he believed, to know something, but it's something entirely different to be able to deal with it. When reason and emotions don't align, there's always a fear that cannot be resolved.

By now, he had made peace with it. He avoided people if he could. Please don't interpret this as arrogance. But he had little to do with them and, fundamentally, didn't want to. That protected him and others from disappointment.

Perhaps that's why he always had problems when it came to women. Their signals and body language didn't register with him. I know what it could mean when a woman runs her fingers through her hair, or when she maintains prolonged eye contact, at least theoretically. But then I wonder, why would she mean me specifically? In essence, each of my relationships started with the respective women, at least those that mattered.

I assumed they should notice what I felt for them and therefore didn't understand what they expected from me. I preferred to withdraw.

It's the same with my daughter. Basically, I know that she carries something with her. After graduating, she started studying philosophy and history. I was infinitely proud of her. Although she declared at the high school graduation ball that she wanted to study these subjects because of her teacher, I was convinced that I also had a certain influence on her choice, because they are also my favorite subjects.

When she told me after a year that she would drop out of her studies, I was deeply affected, and for a while, I was speechless. If I remember correctly, tears came to my eyes. I still don't believe to this day that the subjects were too difficult for her. She had rather chosen the wrong friends. They seemed like lazy loafers to me. There was alcohol everywhere, and I don't want to know what they smoked away.

She had chosen friends who paralyzed her instead of encouraging her. Yet she had told me that in her first exam, she had pursued a different opinion than her study group and turned out to be right in the end.

Her association with these stoner slacker people didn't do her attitude, from my point of view, any good. She let herself be dragged down by them. In that respect, she resembles her mother, surrounding herself with people she feels superior to. I don't know if that has anything to do with inferiority complexes. Because one is afraid of the challenge. I didn't talk to her about it because I hoped she would notice it herself.

She pretended that she didn't see a professional future with these study subjects. Yet a professor had told us about his former assistant and that he now earned really good money in business. One of the virtues that studying history brings is that you learn to collect data and facts and then analyze them. A skill that is highly valued and well paid in business. She said she didn't want to go into business.

The irony, however, is that after her second degree, she worked for a branch of business that relies on people's convenience and convinces them that they cannot jog in the forest or in the city, but need expensive equipment and the stale air of a gym. She is now employed by the state. If she had completed her first degree, she could probably have pursued a higher career. But it's futile to think about it now.

Perhaps she expected me to encourage her. I don't know. I'm not good at such things. Instead, I only showed her my disappointment. She probably felt rejected or abandoned. I was convinced that I wouldn't succeed in dissuading her from her decision this time either. I had never succeeded before. She can be just as stubborn as I am.

Hannes wasn't one of those who carry their difficult childhood with them, blaming all the fault for their own failures on their parents, or in his case, on his grandparents. For one thing, that wasn't fashionable in his generation, and secondly, as he got older, he realized that they could only act as they had learned. Where would one start, and where would this shifting of responsibility end? No, that wasn't his way. That's not how Hannes operated.

"Do you believe in horoscopes?" he once asked me. "Not really," I replied. "Chinese astrology works entirely differently from the Western one. The twelve animal years have less to do with money, career, and love, but rather with character traits and predispositions. I can see myself in my zodiac sign. The same goes for my daughter. However, I cannot say for sure how much this actually applies to all those born in the respective year. It's also hard for me to imagine that all people of the same year have the same or at least similar characters. However, it helped me to accept myself."

"Don't you think that can also lead to complacency?" I asked. "That's just how I am, I can't change that," he replied. "Yes, maybe you're right," Hannes said, "but don't our weaknesses also belong to us? What's the point of constantly trying to imitate the supposed strengths of others? What would be left of ourselves? Wouldn't we become bad copies of other people?"

"In my younger years, I often envied these composed, silent men," he continued. "There were colleagues at the theater who almost went home with a different woman every night and acted as if nothing special had happened the next day. One of them, he worked in stage technology, particularly caught my attention. He was married to a really beautiful woman. She was petite, blond, and had a strikingly beautiful face. I didn't understand why someone like that had to cheat regularly. Then one day after the reunification, he was found hanged in the rehearsal room. His wife had met a wealthy Oriental man and had disappeared with him to Dubai. Apparently, her husband couldn't cope with that. From this, I concluded that he probably wasn't as composed as he liked to pretend. I understood that this peer pressure among men was often just a facade, but it could certainly be a doom."

"Eventually, I asked Hannes about his grandmother again. So, she fetched the boy from the home. He spent the first few years of his childhood well cared for with his grandparents. Hannes wasn't dumb. At the age of four, he was already reading German Fraktur in his grandmother's Bible. He wrote in Sütterlin and memorized his grandmother's songs. In his family, only Low German was spoken at the time, so Hannes' first words were naturally in Mecklenburg Platt. What might have seemed quite cute at first turned out to be a problem before he started school. So, the family decided to only speak standard German in his presence, which the grandparents managed in a kind of gibberish. The grandmother's motto in this regard was: You can confuse me and myself, but not mine and yours. A wisdom that hardly helped him academically."

"His grandmother made an effort with Hannes and taught him what she knew. She was a woman from the countryside and had probably only learned the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic during her brief school years. In her childhood, duty awaited on the family farm. Just as she had probably experienced it herself as a child, she had no problem physically disciplining Hannes when necessary. She mostly used a long brown shoehorn that stuck out from the side of her armchair for this purpose. 'You'll be thankful to me later and say, it's a shame about every blow that misses,' she used to justify herself. Hannes never felt grateful for it, yet she remained in his memory as a caring and beloved grandmother.

For him, it was just part of life that he was hit when someone deemed it appropriate. It wasn't something he dwelled on for long. The friendly sibling pair from the neighboring house also occasionally got spanked by their father. Those weren't the times when one danced to his tune. "Those were different times," said Hannes.

To him, she was always like a grandmother from fairy tales. Warm and slightly chubby from age, with sparse gray hair in a bun. Sometimes, Hannes recalls, she would search for her glasses, which she had pushed up onto her forehead. If Hannes then stood before her as a boy and laughed, she would become annoyed. When he then solved the search, she jokingly scolded him for his cheekiness. She often called him a cheeky rascal. He admitted he probably was one. He fondly remembers sitting on a small wooden stool at her feet, listening to her stories or songs.

She had a very special and pragmatic connection to her dear God, as she called him. It was a connection more related to life and not as theoretical as often practiced. She always read the Bible when she was wrestling with a problem or sorrow. There, she found the advice she sought. She wasn't necessarily fond of the church itself. "They colluded with the Nazis to save their livelihoods. But our good Lord Jesus was a Jew too. They should all be ashamed. Now the same gentlemen are cozying up to the Communists. They know how to do it so they won't lose anything. The reverend didn't have children, she knew that, but his housekeeper had four. They're all hypocrites. Those were the grandmother's wise words in this regard."

Hannes admitted that while he didn't consider himself religious, he conceded that his grandmother had also shaped him in this aspect. There were occasions when he talked to HIM. His upward glance indicated whom he meant. When he thought about his car accident, he couldn't be sure if it hadn't happened without HIS help.

We had reached the end of our path for the day and wanted to bid each other farewell. "What accident?" I asked. "Well, I once flipped my car. Nothing happened to me. Only my Trabant was wrecked afterward. I'll gladly tell you about it another time."

We parted ways for the day. I went home, feeling like Hannes was feeding me stories because he had no one else to talk to. He could tell stories in a lively and cheerful manner. "The fish must taste good to the worm, not the angler," I thought. Maybe something could come of this. Sometimes, good stories fall into one's lap. I decided to take notes. You never knew where our walks would lead us.

My four-legged friend was always happy to see his new pack mate. When it was time for a walk, he got restless. He pulled on the leash, which was quite exhausting for him at his age. It must be a good life, free from human problems. When we returned home, he was usually tired and fell asleep immediately in his basket.