Sturm & Drang

Sturm und Drang

“Den 20. Jänner ging Lenz durchs Gebirg […] Müdigkeit spürte er keine, nur war es ihm manchmal unangenehm, daβ er nicht auf dem Kopf gehn konnte.” – Georg Büchner, Lenz 

“Someday, a real rain’s gonna come and wash all the scum off the streets.” – Paul Schrader, Taxi Driver 

I cannot believe, now, that I fell for it. Even more, I cannot believe people are falling for it again. Practical, calm, post-war Germans. To them I suppose it is something from the history books. Incredible tales told by dinosaurs like me. If you haven’t experienced it yourself, as I did… how can you know? 

And yet, to be taken for fools again. The old same lies. The same empty promises; simple, grandiose slogans. Playing at being gods. Becoming monsters. 

Of course, it is a response to crisis. We were in a hell of a mess back then, after the First War. And we’re in a hell of a mess now. Worse, maybe, even. Once again, people reach for the easy solutions. The fairy tales. Our Romantic German soul, so susceptible to overblown oratory – daydreaming a pure, unified master race. Transcending reality? We simply could not deal with it. And so the flag-waving. The uniforms. The speeches. Pure escapism. Yet we also had – have – the persistence, the deadly practicality, the bloody single-mindedness to make unimaginable horror a reality. Far from elevating ourselves into some idealised Aryan heaven, eighty-odd years ago we plunged the whole world into hell. And I played a part in that. 

Now they want to do it all over again. Over my failing old body. 

I swallow a last bitter sip of coffee, rinse out the cup and stare at myself in the mirror. Face scored with fissures and crevices, eyes yet clear and bright, in spite of nearly ten decades on this troubled earth. Of the horrors they have seen. I run a comb through my thinning hair; it snags, like steel wool. 

I pick up the Walther P40 pistol Obersturmbannführer Hässel handed to 18-year-old me that day, in that village in Silesia. The implement of so much evil, unused for so long, it lies heavy, sullen, malevolent in my hand. A precision machine for killing. The shadow of a face falls across my memory – a young woman, long hair flying, dark eyes burning with courage and defiance. I drag myself back into the now, straighten my spine, pull back the slide, the movement fully automatic, engage the safety and tuck the gun into my waistband. Stare into that time-ravaged face one final time. 

From the tram, I see the demonstrators on the square, swarming around a low platform. The speaker, gesticulating, haranguing, working the crowd – just like back then. The symbols – similar enough to be identifiable, different enough to be deniable, for now. A group of antifascist counterdemonstrators barely held back by a thin line of police. I shoulder my way through to the front, people stepping aside for this gaunt old man, as if they can read my past in the fissures on my face. Reaching the foot of the platform, I calmly take out the gun, focus solely on taking aim – training and muscle memory kick in, even after all this time. I align the sights on the ranting, pontificating charlatan up on the platform. 99-year-old me trembles a little, yet hardly more than I did eighty-odd years ago, in that village in Silesia; I still have the strength to squeeze the trigger. But just as I begin to do so, the shouting I have filtered out reaches a crescendo; a wave surges through the crowd, a body crashes into me and I spin, find myself staring down the pistol’s sights not at the agitator up on the stage but at a young woman, long hair flying, dark eyes burning with courage and defiance. Once again, I desperately try to recall the deadly signal my brain has just sent to my trigger finger…