Viktor Klemperer
First a line or two about Viktor Klemperer. He was a German Jew, a professor at the University of Dresden. He wrote the only known complete diary of a German Jew through the Third Reich. In total, his published diaries span 1933 to 1959. I read them 15 years back and still think often about things I learned from them. He wrote the wonderful line: "I am German. The others are un-German". Here is an article with more about him if you're interested. The diaries are long, but lucid, superbly observant, and fascinating.
The diaries are also unique for several reasons. They were written without the "benefit of hindsight". He describes the coming to power of the Nazis alongside his ordinary life. He doesn't have a clue what is coming next. When he writes in 1942 about having heard of a work camp in the East called Auschwitz, where "conditions are terrible and life expectancy is short", it offers valuable insight into contemporary levels of knowledge. There's great debate about how much people of the time knew: here was at least one man with his ear to the ground, a great personal interest, with no contemplation of the industrial evil of the gas chambers.
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| Professor Viktor Klemperer |
In any case, leaving aside the history, Klemperer is a highly-strung, slightly pessimistic worrier. The political situation is very much in the background of his life at first. Just like any of us, he has other more mundane concerns. He worries about the little house he and his wife are building. After the initial excitement of buying it and driving on the Autobahn, he worries about the cost of running his new Opel car. He worries about his academic work and job at the university. Then his worries become very much more immediate: he is dismissed from his position. He is banned from parks, cinemas, theatres. The war breaks out. He and Eva have to give up their beloved cat, and then their home. They move to a "Jew's House" in Dresden. Their friends start being "resettled" in the East. It is terrifying to observe from the eyes of someone at the time.
As the outside situation gets more and more dreadful, a lightness enters Klemperer's writing. He is alive and is consciously glad to be alive. He takes each day as it comes, and it is precious. He is spared right through until 1945 from deportation because his wife is non-Jewish and because he is a WW1 veteran. Finally as part of a last frenzy of murdering by the Nazis, on 15 February, he is due to be deported. On 14 February the Allies bomb Dresden (incidentally killing 50 of the 150 remaining Jews of the city). He tears the yellow star from his jacket, destroys his identity papers, and joins the lines of refugees and lives out the war in hiding. The second volume of his diaries end with his triumphant return to his little house with his wife, after the war.
In many respects I wish I had never read the third volume of his diaries. Klemperer has survived the Nazi regime. He has his home back. He is reinstated to his job. He is made a senator in the newly founded German Democratic Republic. His happiness seems to last a few months, however, before the old worries start again along with the deep personal doubts and insecurity. Rapidly the "heaviness" in his writing resurfaces.
He is just human, like all of us, but I'd rather have believed that the remaining years of his life were filled with peace, joy and happiness. Instead, the outside situation was very different, but it was back to square one for him in many respects. My heart just entirely went out to him. He was such a wonderful, but ultimately such a fragile man.
Life is Short
Life really is short. At 42, I'm well aware of how rapidly it speeds up. A couple of months ago, my best friend from school, Nicholas, dropped dead in his Mum's house. It seems like yesterday we were inter-railing around Europe together aged 18.
We all have problems and worries. I often walk past an old churchyard and see dates like 1772-1845 on them. I imagine all the worries that the person had: how huge and real their personal fights, dramas and problems were to them... and how that is all now gone and forgotten. No one is around to remember any of the details.
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| How big is my problem, looked at from here? |
- imagine you're on a spaceship and look down on little Peter and his problems. How do they look in the great scheme of things, with what's going on in the world?
- sort out what is real and what is being constructed around it in my head. What has actually happened, and what am I making it mean, adding in drama and making it worse?
- accept that life is part choice, and a lot of chance. When you realise you can't control many things you are released from something very fundamental
- realise that your can't control much of the shit that goes on in life, but you can often control your reaction to it.
- count your blessings. I try to do this every night to put things in perspective. I have so many blessings: my health, my wonderful boyfriend, my dog, my work, my Mutti, my friends, my lovely home
- try to be in the "now". You might be worried about something that could happen tomorrow, next week or next month - but you will be destroying your enjoyment of now if you constantly think about it. Just consciously try to shut it out and deal with it then.
And I do try, and after years of doing it, I know it's working. I'm a far happier, less worrying, more "zen" person than I was before I was 30. I might get caught up in drama (on and off line!) but it dissipates rapidly. I think that's the key.
The real troubles will blindside you some idle Tuesday
There's one other point that I'm going to steal from the annoying "Wear Sun Screen" song from a few years back.
Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.How true. Last Monday I was pottering home from work at 4.40pm, all happy, in my 3-week old shiny new car, in a 30 limit. I'd spent the evening polishing it the day before. My 11 year old collie Oscar was in the back. A car appeared from nowhere in front of me. He was on my side of the road, overtaking a line of traffic on the crest of a hill. It was on a bend. I had one second to brake before the airbags went off.
I'm fine, other than painful whiplash, cuts and a sprained wrist. I was checked out in A&E and am a month's worth of painkillers. I've been off work all week. Oscar was also thoroughly checked out and is 100%. I've had a rough week: nightmares, shakes, crying. It's my first collision in 24 years of driving in 30 countries. There were witnesses and the other car was squarely on my side. The Police have said they will recommend prosecution. It could've been so much worse, and all those safety features I paid for (but never expected to use) did their job incredibly well protecting me and Oscar.
But I have been shaken up. This blog is an attempt I guess, to "get it all out there", to acknowledge the upset and the problem, and to move on. People have been lovely to me on and offline, and I am well aware that if I were out on a spaceship, looking down on all the problems on Earth, this doesn't even register. I'm not about to lose my house, my friends and my life to a murderous regime, let's face it.
If you were one of those people who were kind to me, though, this also my thanks to you. People can make their own lives better or worse, and can make other people's better or worse too. I've felt a lot of basic human kindness this week and I appreciate and would like to acknowledge it.
