Seeberger Kids Days E-Book

Georg Satirev

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 389

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

It's about the question of the "right life". When Paul receives a life-threatening diagnosis, the answer is all the more urgent. Together with his friend, he begins a journey through time, back to the days of his childhood. Paul's grandparents' conventional philosophy of life, which always found its own individual expression while safeguarding their own interests, makes his carefree childhood at Lake Starnberg appear in a different light in retrospect. By interweaving the 1950s with the present, Paul comes closer to understanding. And even if, from today's perspective, he considers quite a few of the arrangements of the time to be questionable, his benevolent, appreciative attitude brings him very close to "life lived properly".

Leseprobe

Dedication

For A.

I

"Learn art in life,

learn life in the work of art."

Friedrich Hölderlin

1

How to start?

Should we continue our story about, let's say Paul Poth, but we could also abbreviate him, since names in novels often distract or lead to false associations: P. P. - which is more than Homer's nobody - or euphonious, but somewhat old-fashioned and artificial, Adrian or, in good German, Ulrich or Waldemar - the Bavarian Woldemar - Starnberg, since our story is also set on the lake of the same name, or aristocratic Bavarian Leopold or francophone Frederic or even Jewish, God-given, Nathan, our hero, who nevertheless has a fairly successful and enjoyable, if not always straightforward, and sometimes fractured, life, He led a rather successful and enjoyable life, albeit not always a straightforward one, but otherwise one that was spared any major disasters - apart from the one that gave rise to this story, the diagnosis of a generally fatal illness in his late fifties, which can nowadays be described as such for the person concerned, a life that corresponded to the social and political environment that developed peacefully and patiently? Knowing full well that the narrative is also about the narrator through his point of view, through his choice of words, that the knowledge of the who and what of the writer makes what is written more comprehensible, or at least puts it into perspective.

If we were to do so, we would have to report that Paul Poth - the name we have now obviously chosen - was already known to the author as a child, and that the narrator has the honor of being able to count himself among his friends to this day. Times spent together in childhood, youth and as students, shared

Studying abroad, being each other's best man and godparent have confirmed this friendship and allow us to take responsibility for the following lines.

2

Should we start like this: A warm, dry wind was blowing from the south - the foehn, which the Romans euphoniously calledfavonius.The sky was clear and the low humidity of the foehn revealed a magnificent view from the park-like garden of Consul Dr. Poth to the Alpine chain, from which the Zugspitze towered. It was a beautiful July day in 1959.

Even on Sundays, Lake Starnberg was not yet covered by a sea of white sails, reducing the feeling of wind, water and movement to constant evasive maneuvers. The lake was a light blue patch of color in a wide green circle, with individual white spots. The view of the village of Seeberg from the living room of Villa Poths was primarily of the neo-baroque church towers. Unlike perhaps some towns, Seeberg was not recognizable by its walkway, as there was virtually no movement at this time of day.

Following his habit, the furniture manufacturer and art dealer Poth started his Sunday morning with a swim in Lake Starnberg. He used his bathing hut, which was built into the lake from the shore and gave him exclusive access to the lake. He dived into the smooth surface of the water. The water was pleasant, around twenty-three degrees, yet refreshing in the morning. His view of the other side of the lake was unobstructed, not yet obscured by numerous buoys and the rigged sailboats hanging from them. The opposite towers of Ammerlander Castle, which once belonged to Count Pocci, were only dimly visible against the low but already warm sun. In the southern distance, he could dimly make out Heimgarten, Herzogstand, Jochberg and Benediktenwand, and behind them, already sunlit, the light grey of the Karwendel mountains with individual white specks of snow. A lone sailing boat rested in the lake, barely moving, between pairs of ducks. Tiny fish moved trembling and hysterical in the water next to some larger ones, elegantly savoring the vastness of the lake. Birdsong reached Poth's ears, interrupted by the distant ringing of bells, calling the faithful on Sundays. From the lakeside path, you could hear the creaking footsteps of early, lively walkers or the steady sound of a few cyclists who, protected by thuja hedges, never caught sight of Mr. Poth.

After eating breakfast, going to church and watching the TV program "Internationaler Frühschoppen" with six journalists from five countries, hosted by Werner Höfer, it was lunchtime.

Consul Poth had inspected the roses in his garden before sitting down at the glass table under an awning, which was set with pewter plates for lunch. The roses had been selected by Poth himself. Only old varieties with a certain history had been chosen, such as the "Rose of Resht", which originates from Persia and whose lush rosettes glow a deep crimson red. But varieties whose names sounded tempting, such as the snow-white "Boule de Neige", were also given their chance. Consul Poth ordered a new variety from a well-known rose breeder every year and waited to see whether it would develop in his garden. The delicate pink beauty called "La France" from breeder Jean Baptiste Guillot with its double spherical flower was successful, as was the deep blackberry-red shrub rose "Tuscany", which was mentioned as early as 1596, as Consul Poth was happy to explain to visitors. Poth particularly enjoyed the truly clerical purple of the "Cardinal de Richelieu" rose and the lavish fragrance of the climbing rose "Gloier de Dijon", whose dense golden-yellow blooms are folded like a model by the fashion designer Fortuny, whom Proust quoted. Poth liked to have visitors compare its intense fragrance, so typical of old roses, with that of the Damask rose, a type of rose known since antiquity as a sun-worshipper, with noble growth and long leaves.

The garden was laid out in the English style by a renowned garden architect. The gardener Pelz, who lived in his own small house on the property, had to ensure that the garden remained as planned.

After such sensual pleasures for the eyes and nose, the palate was to be spoiled. At the lunch table of Consul Dr. Poth's family, consisting of the consul, his wife, her older sister, known in the family circle as Tatte or otherwise as Frau Majorin, the Jesuit priest Dr. Müller and today - it was an exception, as usually at least one of the three families of the Poths' children were invited on Sundays - only the grandson Paul, who had me, his comrade - also unusual for Sundays - as a guest, was served the lemon ice cream she had made herself by the cook Anni, who had lived and "served" in the house for years. She usually had the housemaids Rosa or Rosi serve it, but she brought the ice cream herself, knowing full well that she could collect the praise for the previous meal - after the soup made from home-plucked sorrel, there was an oxtail - from Mr. Konsul and that Father would assure her, as he had done so often before, that he could extend his stay in Seeberg into eternity, albeit not in the theological sense, just because of the ice cream - Mrs. Poth rolled her eyes imperceptibly.

Mr. Poth, as an entrepreneur always careful not to use the praise he regularly gave his employees as motivation, without having been taught this in management training courses as a beneficial way of increasing productivity, so extensively that they would think they were irreplaceable or should benefit from a pay rise, soon drew attention to the view of the lake and the mountains from the terrace due to the hairdryer, albeit with a sympathetic sideways glance at his wife: "I know the hairdryer is giving you a headache while it satisfies my aesthetic pleasures. Our Father would say that this is the dialectic of life: what pleases one person is detrimental to another. Should we wish there was no hairdryer and we had to do without these views - true natural beauty - but others could avoid physical discomfort? What do you think, my dear Jakob?" Jakob Müller, the Jesuit priest, took up the subject, which we will not pursue any further, while Mrs. Poth took care of the cook Anni and asked her to sit down at the table. They wanted to discuss the next week's menu.

Paul and I listened, as we often did, to the gentlemen's conversation and, although we were only eight years old, we remembered a lot of it and years later we sometimes discussed what was said as being typical of views that we were keen to question critically.

Even now, when I sat opposite Paul almost fifty years later and we began to sum up his life, albeit on a sad occasion, his first thought was: "When I think back to the fifties ..."

3

Would this be the right start?

In the spring of 2007, my friend Paul Poth, with whom I played cops and robbers as a child, with whom I chanted "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh" as a pupil and student at demonstrations that were more like "happenings" for us, with whom I had obtained an American academic degree together at Harvard, for whose first child I was godfather, whose company law disputes I had provided legal support for, and whose company sale and thus the opportunity to lead an economically carefree life for himself, his wife and future generations, provided they had their assets managed prudently and wisely, I had carried out, that thanks to a brain tumor, his life would soon come to an end at the age of 57. As it was uncertain how long his mental faculties would last or how soon physical shortcomings would require mental attention, he asked me to be available to him as soon as possible, if not daily, then several times a week for up to three hours. He wanted to sum up his life. I was his oldest and one of his few true friends. Our relationship of trust ensured that messages, thoughts and expressed feelings were not presented to the market of vanity and gossip. It was not about a biography and a presentation for later generations. He only wanted to come to terms with himself. As therapy knows, talking is a suitable means of doing this and is better than talking to yourself, especially as we have had numerous discussions and conversations together in all periods and situations of our lives.

Of course I agreed. We arranged to meet at my office in Brienner Strasse from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the days to be agreed. I could guarantee that everything would run smoothly. I had my appointments rescheduled or arranged for

Representation and we began our meetings three days after the announcement of the fatal illness.

4

The following start would also be conceivable:

On April 6, 2008, around 2 p.m., it was as warm in Munich as it had occasionally been in June or September in previous years. The people sitting at the tables set up outside the "Münchener Freiheit" café on the square of the same name in Schwabing, or walking past it, had adapted their clothing to the climate change that had supposedly already occurred, although it had been constantly denied until then. On average, this was more chic and stylish - a judgment that is certainly presumptuous, because who decides what is chic and stylish? - than people in other German cities. Is this because Munich is closer to Italy? Where people know more about taste and style? Was it because the reconstructed architecture of Munich's past centuries, which, and this is probably almost a consensus, is preferable to the quickly erected and carelessly put together buildings in most post-war German cities, rubbed off on the style and taste of the residents, or was it simply a question of price, of the greater and broader prosperity in Munich than, say, Essen, Dortmund or Mönchengladbach.

I was a little early, had taken a seat and ordered a latte with lots of milk - called "Verlängerter" in Vienna - from a black-haired waitress with a rather Eastern accent - in Vienna it would have been a waiter - as a latte macciato. At least there were some local newspapers to read, unlike in Vienna with its extensive range of international newspapers. Since I had subscribed to the "Süddeutsche" anyway, I opted for the "Abendzeitung" and was once again confirmed in my already existing judgment, which was therefore a prejudice, that this newspaper could be read in five minutes, that, be it due to television, the competition that had appeared or the general leveling, the times were long gone when, thanks to Sigi Sommer's original flashes of wit, thanks to "Hunters" or later Michael Gräter's local gossip, thanks to witty cartoons and comics, the "Abendzeitung" gave you the feeling that you could be proud to be a Munich resident. Today, the "Abendzeitung" documents Munich's "Möchte gern" provinciality, which, like the long since inauthentic statements of a Mr. Hirnbeiss, at best preserves the memory of better times, while the "Bild" can at least pretend to have looked the people in the mouth nationally.

The necessary five minutes had not yet elapsed when I saw my friend Paul, apparently looking for me. He is about one meter eighty-five tall, has beginning white but full, still blond hair, parted short on the left, an even, beautiful face with large, blue eyes, a straight nose and wide, sensual lips. He is slim and wears rimless glasses, which had darkened thanks to the sunshine.

I waved, he noticed me and sat down. "I'm looking forward to it. How are you?"

"It sucks. I'm the victim of a brain tumor and have maybe three months to live. An operation is not possible. I can still think, talk and move. But that will change soon. I've known that since yesterday. But I still wanted to attend our meeting."

5

One possible way to start could be formulated like this:

As a realist, Paul Poth was aware that he had lived, that ahead of him lay a medically indicated procedure of delaying death through measures such as radiation, chemotherapy and medication, which was purely for the sake of survival and in itself pointless. The delayed death should also be as painless as possible.

This was unavoidable and ultimately predefined in the respective steps, not in detail, but on the whole. What Paul Poth still wanted, however, and this was the act of freedom, was something he could still decide and become aware of: He wanted to clarify for himself how he had lived. What had he done right, what had he done right, what was unavoidable, what might have gone differently had he made a different decision.

He wanted to die in the knowledge that he had not only settled his affairs outwardly in his will, but that he had given an account of his life to himself, that he had preferred the Last Judgement for himself, so to speak.

To realize this, he turned to me, his oldest friend, to be his sparring partner or therapist. For a long time, we had been

Instead of going to bed early, high school graduates and beginning students discussed whether there was a right life in the wrong one and, if so, how it should be formulated.

We arranged to meet at my office. We set our meetings for at least three times a week, except Saturdays and Sundays, at 5 p.m. and gave ourselves a maximum of three hours a day.

6

Despite all potentialities, a decision - and it is free - must lead to reality, in this case to a concrete beginning:

To the south of Munich, nestled in a gentle hilly landscape and at some distance in front of it, and therefore by no means oppressive and constricting, lies the northern Alpine chain, Lake Starnberg, in contrast to Lake Ammersee, the Bauernsee, also known as Fürstensee.

The name has only been officially valid since 1962, so at the time in which part of our story takes place, Würmsee would have been the official name.

The small town of the same name is also located on Lake Starnberg, but there is no forest or even a castle with this name. On the other hand, there are many villas and country houses that wealthy citizens have built on the western shore of the lake in a wide variety of styles since the mid-19th century, mainly following the railroad line.

On this side of the lake, at the northern end of an inlet, is the village of Seeberg and one of the villas in which Paul Poth's grandparents resided for two generations.

The "Seeblick" villa was located in the middle of a park which, as the name suggests, offered a view of both the lake and the Alps, especially the Zugspitze. It was built by a Munich architect in the neo-classical style, which means that stylistic elements from past eras were eclectically combined. In this case, however, it was not ostentatious or nouveau riche, but rather restrained with a sense of style and taste.

Consul Dr. Poth's father was an art dealer and had commissioned a renowned Munich architect to design and build him a suitable country house - twelve years after the completion of his townhouse in Brienner Strasse, the second floor of which was now occupied by my lawyer's office, which served as a meeting place for becoming aware of the life lived by my friend Paul Poth.

7

I say friend. Yes, Paul Poth was and is my friend.

Friendship is based on shared experiences, such as school or student days.

We had already played together as small children, as pupils in the sixth form, although at different grammar schools and different places we had been trained together in dialectics - that of Hegel as a necessary precursor to Karl Marx - by a student of German studies, a member of the Rotzeg, the so-called Red Cell of German Studies. We had studied different subjects at different universities, I studied law in Munich and philosophy with the Jesuits on the side, Paul studied philosophy and economics in Frankfurt, but together we had the same disappointing experiences with the fringes of the student movement, only to meet again in Cambridge at Harvard University: Paul did the Master of Business Administration, I did the Master of Laws, the Legum Magister, the LL.M.

We also worked together professionally later on, when Paul acted as operational manager for an LBO, i.e. a leveraged buyout or, more popularly today, a locust takeover, and I drew up the necessary contracts. We are godparents to each other's children, I divorced Paul's marriage and was certainly a support to him during this very difficult time for him with many detailed discussions.

We have a common outlook on life, or more precisely, attitude. We detest any pretentious attitude, be it of an intellectual, business or private nature. In this respect, we have an elitist self-image that can certainly be described as such, but which is characterized by not showing it to the outside world. Together, we can then have a good laugh at the vanity and pompous slogans of so-called high achievers, whose success always seems astonishing.

But all that is not enough for a friendship. There must also be intellectual similarities, which in turn can stem from the content of the studies, but also from shared preferences for certain literature, art or other things.

In our case, it was a preference for certain novels. Paul and I loved Proust, Thomas Mann, Fontane, Flaubert, but also Musil, Joyce and, last but not least, the wisdom of Shakespeare.

We agreed that of the current authors, only Philipp Roth, despite his "sex addiction", which disturbed us both, came close. We thought it was a scandal that he had not yet received a Nobel Prize and that the Austrian Jelinek, for example, was preferred to him.

As we were both constantly reading books by the authors mentioned, we always shared small details with each other at regular meetings, such as "I recently found a reference to the possible name of the narrator in 'Gefangenen', the 5th volume of 'Recherche'. I recently found a clue to the possible name of the narrator in 'Prisoners', the fifth volume of 'Recherche', in that Albertine, on the premise of giving the narrator the same name as the author, what an ironic distancing, called him 'My Marcel' or 'Marcel Darling'", or "What Fontane has the old Stechlin say about telegraphing could be applied to e-mail addiction today: 'The finer morals certainly suffer'." Such references led to discussions on questions such as the general truths of novels or the extent to which novels or art in general, and only art, immortalize lived life.

True friendship only becomes conscious at an advanced age. You could discuss things of the most intimate nature with a friend and still be sure that knowledge was neither used as a weapon in direct conversation, as is all too often the case in romantic relationships, nor as gossip among acquaintances. Through shared experience and intellectual agreement, one was certain of understanding. Showing weakness without provoking strength is a sign of friendship, not love. Love, and Proust knew this much better than Adorno, is possessive and as such always entangled in power struggles. True friendship escapes this.

In our case, we also agreed on basic views on philosophy. I shared the view of Paul, who had completed his doctorate in philosophy, that Seneca's old dictum that philosophy promised the human race "good advice" no longer applied. Philosophy wanted knowledge. But this could no longer be conveyed philosophically to the average citizen today, something that philosophers have always known, from Socrates' knowledge that he knew nothing to Max Horkheimer's admission that those who begin to philosophize are not safe from the experience that their undertaking is absurd.

But what kind of advice is this to mankind: we know nothing and our statements are absurd. Therefore, we are convinced that today it is up to the great novelists to present models of action and thus also advice in their novels, without pointing a finger and conveying abstract ideas and without renouncing the difficulties and contradictions that human existence implies. In the confrontation with life lived and portrayed in novel form, the modern individual can gain insight and thus advice for his or her individual way of life.

II

8

"When I think of my childhood, I think of Seeberg," Paul began, "even though my parents lived in Schwabing and I spent much more time there than in Seeberg with my grandparents. Why might that be?"

We sat opposite each other in comfortable leather armchairs, each with a glass of mineral water in front of us.

I looked at Paul and remembered the first time I saw him, when we were both maybe four or five years old. My parents and his grandparents were neighbors.

It was in spring, I think it was April. We had a foehn wind. On the mountains, whose peaks occasionally dissolved into flat clouds stretching far into the horizon, the snow was retreating, which, despite the clear view, could only be interpreted in detail, not explicitly seen. The singing of the spring birds, which, wonders of nature, create a melodic concert in a completely uncoordinated manner, was repeatedly contrasted by the distant sound of airplane engines, the occasional ringing of the deep bell of the Seeberg church and the occasional, more distant engine noise, which reminded us that it was a working day. The magnolias on the tree in front of the house were rather late to burst into bloom for the time of year in mid-April, documenting the fact that winter had been slow to leave. The tulips in red, yellow and purple bloomed wildly in the already green meadow, speckled with white thanks to the daisies, occasionally decorated with blue anemones, and tamed and orderly in the flowerbed. The golden yellow daffodils also presented their trumpet-shaped flowers amidst their taut, linear leaves. You could see that the apple trees were keen to imitate the pink wild cherry blossoms. Many a flying creature was awakened by the surprisingly warm day after the recent cold weather.

We met at the garden fence.

The flirting behavior of adults can already be observed in children: A fleeting glance, the realization that the other person has also risked a glance, an encouraging nod of the head, then a hello, a few noncommittal words, the farewell. The next time: An even more binding hello, you already know each other, then the first markers, you signal your interest, but the other person shouldn't think that this means you are now following them unconditionally, on the contrary, you soon show that you can get on well without them, but you can give it a try.

We met repeatedly at the fence, calling each other by name. It soon became clear that Paul tended to play down his grandparents' huge property, he was embarrassed by it, while I - on the contrary - wanted to emphasize my parents' house, which was by no means modest, but certainly not so coherent and stylish, and whose garden was also much smaller. Both properties signaled a class difference between nobility, in Paul's case money and style nobility, and the bourgeoisie, in my case incarnated in a country house built at the beginning of the century, which my parents, before they moved in at the beginning of the 1950s, had redesigned inside by a well-founded architect in the contemporary style of the time, certainly coherent, but not actually matching the exterior of the country house.

Style and taste, a term that has become historical and which, according to an important publicist, can only be used meaningfully from the early mid-19th century, cannot be learned, nor can they be inherited. They have to be formed, actively and passively. Actively through intellectual engagement with the style-forming elements, i.e. design, architecture and art. Passively, by growing up in a corresponding environment, i.e. in an atmosphere in which the furnishings, eating habits, manners, clothing, in short the so-called outward appearances, the surroundings, the ambience are stylish, in which the question of style and taste are important and are also discussed. Those who have not grown up like this and later, for whatever reason, strive to demonstrate style and taste, their style and taste all too often appear artificial, influenced by third parties, sometimes also by good advisors. It's just not in their blood. Conversely, those who have grown up with style and later neglect it, whether because they have bad memories of their parents' taste, which often corresponds with obvious human lack of style, or simply because of convenience or other priorities in life, are often unable to furnish or dress with style and taste when they are called upon to do so.

However, we children became more aware of our parents' class difference through our parents' comments about their neighbors and through our own observations of their behavior at invitations.

9

Paul's grandfather was a third-generation art dealer, he had built up a furniture factory on the side, studied art history in accordance with his father's wishes and completed his doctorate with a thesis on Bronzino. He had grown up in the town house in Brienner Straße and, after his parents' divorce, in the country villa in Seeberg, and soon in the boarding school in Ettal. His mother was already in her late thirties when he was born. Both parents died when he was barely twenty and his sister, who was seventeen years older and had remained unmarried, endeavored to put him on the right path according to her arch-Catholic views. Thanks to his background, his education, his profession, but also his personal interests and his intellect, Paul's grandfather was predestined to make value judgments about style and taste, and did so. He had inherited wealth, professional success and was good-looking. He also exploited these qualities to obtain the erotic pleasures he thought he should allow himself, even though it was a constantly repeated realization on his part that life was more than Artur Schnitzler wanted to suggest in his "Reigen", more than the perpetual pursuit of sexual satisfaction, which would then only be a short-term satisfaction and would be fulfilled in the perpetual repetition of the eternal same with seemingly only different objects. Consul Poth thus acknowledged his knowledge of Schnitzler's play, although he was otherwise not a fan of the art of theater. Of the arts, Poth only really loved the performing arts, music only to a limited extent, more the intelligent libretti such as "Cosi fan tutte", perhaps also because da Ponte's libretto is committed to rationalism, at least outwardly, to the Enlightenment: a hypothesis is to be verified by an experiment, although this is then radically called into question, as the end is general perplexity and Mozart gives no commentary, but rather mockingly recommends the audience to behave sensibly - quite dialectically the eighteenth century summarized and canceled.

In literature, he preferred Fontane and in philosophy Seneca and Montaigne, philosophers who were not recognized as such by the school of philosophy. He justified his preference for Seneca and Montaigne by saying that their philosophy gave instructions on how to live properly. Philosophy must have a practical reference, otherwise it would be l'art pour l'art, which is at best acceptable in art. Seneca and Montaigne met this requirement, so that normally educated academics could also understand them.

He had enjoyed an extensive humanistic classical education at the monastery school in Ettal together with his schoolmate Dr. Müller, which remained with him throughout his life. He was therefore not only familiar with the gods and dramas of the Greeks, but also with the essential statements of the classical German philosophers, poets and novelists, whose knowledge was required by a bourgeois educational canon in the best sense of the word. Through regular contact with his friend Dr. Müller, he also expanded his knowledge of authors who were not yet classics when he was at school, such as Thomas Mann.

For me as a child, even before my acquaintance and later friendship with Paul, the Poths were a family to be treated with both reverence and caution. Consul Poth was feared because of his openly displayed arrogance.

10

Paul found his grandfather's arrogance, which referred to the intellectual deficits of others as well as their ridiculous efforts to make an impression through bought architectural achievements or learned remarks, rather unpleasant.

Consul Poth had little inhibition about revealing his knowledge, which was actually only half-knowledge, but which remained hidden from those around him who were completely ignorant. He used certain words of wisdom to suit the situation at hand, usually in Latin, such as longa est vita, si plena est, when his wife once again wished for the longest possible life or gently rebuked an overly brash nouveau riche with the saying: Maiore tormento pecunia possidetur quam quaeritur. If Dr. Müller was present during such a conversation, it was quite possible that he would humiliate the Latin rebuke even further, but the latter was just as unaware of this as he was of his rebuke, which he had not understood, by saying to Dr. Müller: "Dear Jakob, I am always reminded of our good old Fontane, who, through his pastor Lorenzen, brought us the wisdom of the lord of the castle and the linen weaver in conversation with Melusine." Dr. Müller smiled, as did his parvenu interlocutor, who didn't dare to ask questions lest he reveal any supposed gaps in his education and, of course, couldn't have the slightest idea that the 'Stechlin' talked about how people used to be lord of the manor or linen weaver for three hundred years, whereas nowadays every linen weaver is a lord of the manor one day. Poth loved to explain to the snobs where the term snobbery came from: "It's interesting how terms become established in linguistic usage. Which snob today still knows that the term used to describe him comes from sine nobilitas, meaning without nobility, used in English private schools for pupils who were not admitted because of their ancestors, but because they were talented, usually came from modest backgrounds and owed their education at expensive elite schools to scholarships. These snobs imitated their privileged comrades in style, language and manners. "But take comfort" - the person addressed did not actually feel like a snob and therefore did not feel addressed - "snobbery is socially required today," and he turned to Dr. Müller with a mischievous smile before continuing to instruct the snob suspect, "even if it has to be admitted that you can hardly find the privileged to imitate anymore, so people imitate what they imagine the supposedly privileged could imitate."

Consul Poth unabashedly quoted Montaigne's maxim to a formal, boring interlocutor, a respectable but ugly elderly lady or a social gossip, who preferred to invite the witty rather than the thoughtful to the table, beauty rather than virtue to bed and expertise to the round table, even if it lacked honesty.

However, to anyone who had often taken part in Consul Poth's social conversations, which was, however, rather rare, partly because Poth avoided such events, whether private or public, as much as possible, such statements, since they were presented all too often, which in turn could have been due to the fact that Poth's social interlocutors were often nouveau riche, would have seemed a little tasteless and overly arrogant. Apparently, Poth needed the society he despised in order to be sure of his own superiority. In any case, Consul Poth came across as highly educated and was regarded as such, which, relatively speaking, he was.

He appeared arrogant, unapproachable, but dangerously charming for the horned men when it mattered. Especially as he verified his motto "It's not because it's hard that we don't dare, but because we don't dare, it's hard" on many a woman of his further acquaintance, at least in the first half of his married life.

Paul sensed Consul Poth's arrogance from the fact that Dr. Poth actually only spoke seriously with the Jesuit priest Dr. Müller, only exchanged a few banalities with his wife, Paul's grandmother, and from the mostly disparaging remarks he made about his wife's guest list at invitations she held in such high esteem. At such events, which he tried to keep to a minimum and which faded over time, and at the subsequent counter-invitations, to which he all too often let his wife go alone with the excuse of work commitments that could not be postponed, he usually only talked to the Jesuit priest about topics that were unfamiliar to the other guests.

Paul, who was often present at such receptions, which were often lunchtime invitations and extended into the afternoon, usually held by the hand and pulled to his seat by his grandmother, proudly presented to the female guests, did not consciously perceive the words when his grandfather got excited about the fact that Dr. Müller, not only because of the Naphta in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, and despite the contrary materialistic approach, thought he recognized the dichotomy of nature and taste in Fontane's work. It was incomprehensible to Paul when his grandfather said that such German studies were ridiculous, good for nothing but revolving around self-imposed problems that were not problems at all, like Lukacs' obvious attitude of judging everything according to an ideologically predetermined grid, like Dr. Müller, the Jesuit, only from a different perspective. Paul heard his grandfather rave about Mozart's 'Magic Flute' as proof that art and enlightenment were not antipodes, which Kant had also demonstrated, as Dr. Müller added and confirmed Consul Poth in his attitude by praising the Königsberg native for his statement that taste is the ability to judge the sensualization of moral ideas. Poth was able to state that taste was not just l'art pour l'art. Style is the attitude that manifests taste in deeds, most impressively realized in painting by the Florentine Bronzino.

Paul didn't understand the individual words, but he understood the gestures, the style and kept hearing taste, style and he saw the looks of Dr. Müller and his grandfather when individual guests dared to intervene in their conversation, wanted to demonstrate general knowledge and said, for example, "Fontane, ah yes, a wide field" or of Mozart's 'Magic Flute', "yes, yes, I heard it at the Salzburg Festival sometime in the thirties, I don't really like operas, but it was really cute. Wasn't a pair of daddies called something?", or mumbling something about "my starry sky above me and the moral law within me" in memory of their school lessons at Kant.

Paul also noticed how the guests turned away somewhat piqued, but at least they had learned the lesson to reduce future conversations with Paul's grandfather to trivial greetings and farewells and, in the case of counter-invitations, to have their wives assured with great care that it wouldn't matter at all if Mrs. Poth came alone, as she had once again pointed out that she couldn't make a binding commitment for her husband because of his erratic business appointments.

The teacher was, quite in the tradition of his order, Dr. Müller, who clearly agreed with Paul's grandfather that the worst were the half-educated - "Terrible as a catarrh", interrupted the consul, quoting Fontane with a wink - who talked everywhere without knowing what they were talking about, who, with their card-playing intelligence, which was quite sufficient to provide them with enough means for a bourgeois existence, thought that everything was for sale and that it was enough to repeat buzzwords, which was usually enough in their circles, as knowledge was limited to newspaper headlines anyway and anyone who knew that Fontane's first name was Theodor, that Mozart was Austrian even though some operas were sung in Italian or that Kant lived in Königsberg at the end of the 18th century was considered educated. Kant lived in Königsberg at the end of the 18th century.

"If they would at least take literally the wisdom of the Viennese philosopher, of whom they have certainly not heard and whose deeper meaning they would certainly not understand: 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. By the way, I would like to tell you that I am well aware that this dictum does not apply to the facts mentioned, but means something completely different. You certainly reject," he continued, addressing Dr. Müller, "this guiding principle of positivism as completely unphilosophical, since, as a well-known contemporary philosopher says, philosophy has to do with that which does not have its place in a given order of thoughts and objects. You call it theology. I prefer practical philosophy that is applicable to concrete life, and so I hold with Wittgenstein, whose invitation should certainly also be used as a motto for invitations. The result would be that the conversation would be reduced to carefully formulated gossip, the repetition of obvious certainties such as 'It's raining again today' or the formulation of tautologies such as 'At rush hour in the late afternoon, the streets are terribly I congested and it's impossible to get anywhere'. But better banalities than inflated pseudo-knowledge."

My parents were also present at these occasional invitations. As they were neighbors, Paul had already formed an impression of my parents. Because Paul's grandfather's only pleasure at these invitations was to retire to the library with Dr. Müller after the end, while the servants were clearing away, and to characterize the individual people there. Paul was allowed to fetch the silver cigar box and while he was cutting off the tips of the cigars, which he loved, he soon heard his grandfather talking about my parents, the neighbors, in the comforting smoke of the cigars, which - in contrast to the hectic cigarettes - perhaps that's why they always meant culture, lifestyle to him. "In contrast to their Anglican colleagues, who only repeat precedents, German lawyers could also understand something of logic thanks to the BGB, if the suspicion that they have literally just crammed the rules into their heads, which is always enough to pass the exams, were not confirmed all too often. I suspect this is also the case with our neighbor, who, enterprising as he is, bought the widow Stiegler's house in order to immediately renovate and extend it in a modern style. He is one of those lawyers who can't get over the fact that we make it too clear that we are not lawyers, but rather that we keep lawyers and take revenge by issuing inflated invoices that nobody can check anyway. What I find worse, however, is this nouveau riche posturing, when a country house from the turn of the century is sold off to an old woman at the lowest price, then ostentatiously decorated with marble staircases, toilets and bathrooms, with silly bare-breasted sculptures, specially made lamps, which in detail have their charm, and then hollowed out by an architect who certainly has style in detail, but whose work as a whole is grotesque. Possibly, but this is by no means an excuse, because mere acquiescence does not exculpate - we hear this all the time in memory of our great former leader - but he simply let his wife do it and the architect has come to fruition. Our neighbor took over his law firm from his father, who died recently. He was one of the staunch National Socialist lawyers who couldn't remember anything after 1945 and seamlessly passed on his legal expertise, and thus his sinecure, to post-war democratic Germany. The son settled into his nest, i.e. his law firm. I had also voted for Hitler when I was thirty-three and told my mongrels to do the same: Now let's vote for this guy, maybe things will get better. And it did get better. But I always found it incomprehensible how intelligent people could believe in nonsense and make any sense out of the shouting. And then the story about the Jews."

"But you have to admit that you certainly benefited from it in business terms," Dr. Müller interjected.

"Sure, but I advised my Jewish colleagues early on to go abroad and always paid them market prices. After all, a converted Jew was my son's godfather. Today, I am once again doing excellent business with them abroad. I now benefit from my correct attitude at the time. The clever ones left in time. The stupidest were actually the German nationalists, who thought that Germans didn't do that. Even my neighbor's father, an early member of the SS, was shocked when he became aware of the massacre of his SA colleagues. Incidentally, the Catholic Church didn't cover itself in glory either."

11

My impression of the Poths was quite different. My parents had moved to Seeberg after buying and renovating the house. It was my mother's job to identify these circles on the one hand and to establish the relevant contacts in a targeted manner on the other, in a joint effort to be accepted into the better circles of Seeberg as soon as possible. Progress was discussed at the breakfast table on Sundays. The neighbourhood with the Poths was recognized as significant in two respects. The Poths had the largest estate in Seeberg. They therefore belonged per se to the so-called better people and the fact that they were neighbors made it easier to make contact. On the occasion of the house purchase, my parents introduced themselves to the Poths, as they thought it appropriate to inform them about the extensive conversion and extension, especially as this also required the neighbors' signature, which was provided without any hesitation.

I therefore formed an image of Mr. Consul Poth so early on, an image like you form images of poets whose books you have read. Sometimes they are accurate, sometimes you are disappointed and imagine the poet to be quite different. Verlaine's coarse face, which is depicted in Vallotton's painting, is not at all suited to the poet, who sings of the familiar dream ("Mon rêve familier") of the unknown woman, never the same one, who loves and understands him:

"I often have this strange and disturbing dream

D'une femme inconnue, et que j'aime, et qui m'aime,

And which is, each time, never quite the same

Ni tout à fait une autre, et m'aime et me comprend."

On the other hand, you can see Marcel Proust's uptight, screwed-upness and sensitivity, Thomas Mann's complexity and self-confidence ("Where I am is German literature."), Fontane's wisdom and gentleness in his old age, Musil's malice, Flaubert's smugness, Joyce's intellectuality and Philipp Roth's ageist lust. Or, because you know the faces, do you identify the faces with certain characteristics of the books when you read them and thus place them in the faces?

In any case, I had an idea of Dr. Poth long before I saw him. The image was confirmed by his appearance. Mr. Poth was tall, with hardly any hair, a small moustache, a beautiful Attic nose, full lips, strong eyebrows, large, elongated eyes and a prominent chin. His large but soft hands were striking. Mr. Poth tended towards fullness, which accentuated his body weight. He had a deep voice. Mr. Poth was always a personality that commanded my respect. Paul was aware of this and was proud of his grandfather in this respect.

My parents were only greeted by Mrs. Poth each time, and even for an evening reception on the occasion of the inauguration of our newly designed house, Mr. Poth was excused. However, he was interested in our architect, Mr. Steichlein, whom Mr. Poth asked to come and show him his property and who, in return, so to speak, gave Mr. Poth a special tour of our house. Despite the presence of my mother, who, however, did not notice Mr. Steichlein's slight apologetic shoulder lift, Mr. Poth could not refrain from pointing out that the romantic disposition of the lady of the house was probably the cause of such a depiction in the case of a few inconsistencies or tastelessness, such as a half-sculpture above the fireplace depicting a shepherd playing the flute with a few sheep. He added: "Incidentally, I recently heard a really good definition of kitsch: the combination of sweetness and pretentiousness, of the screwed and the ordinary."

Otherwise, he praised the consistency of some of the details of the interior design and said that such a modern interior in combination with a country house that has incorporated elements of the rural surroundings, as was common at the turn of the century, is a rather unique eclecticism. "Nothing against eclecticism, you've seen enough of it in my house. But the question is whether the consistent style of an architect who, certainly eclectically, combines stylistic elements from different eras into a new whole, which is called classicism - the last great unifying European style, according to some clever people - is not preferable to the triad of average country architecture by city dwellers, modern interiors and simple philistine ideas."