Five Weeks at Humanitas. Manfred Jurgensen
as to me. Any hint of a smile is gone. This is a woman in charge, I realise, used to calling the shots. I’m sure in her earlier days she wore power suits and shoulder pads. But those times are gone. By now women are used to holding authoritative positions in most walks of life, even in a sanatorium for the mentally challenged. Seeing how much she’s enjoying being the alpha female, I decide to call her Bold Miriam.
She addresses me in a tone of curious inclusive role-playing, as if to prompt everyone present of the task ahead. ‘You see, Professor,’ she begins again, ‘we thought we might go through your medical history with you. You may be able to help us in our endeavour to find the right treatment for your condition.’ As she speaks the other members of the Board open manila folders and start rummaging about in piles of paper. Who provided them with that much information about my life? I remember an older colleague in my own department expressing surprise and irritation over having been Googled by his students. ‘Is there no privacy any more?’ he objected. I told him that not to be on the Internet was like being without a shadow. Now I must admit I understand his anger. I don’t appreciate someone prying into a person’s private life any more than my colleague, but accept the loss of social intimacy as part of the world we live in. Most of the time we don’t even know we’re being monitored by CCT, computers and a host of other technological devices.
My thoughts are interrupted by Bold Miriam’s imperious voice. ‘Now, what about those fainting spells you appear to have suffered for some time? Can you tell us what has brought them on? Did they occur as a result of overwork, too much stress, that sort of thing? Or were there other circumstances you believe may have contributed?’
I suppose it’s a fair question, but leading into an area I don’t want to go. Not because I have something to hide; it’s rather that despite its assurances I don’t believe this panel of so-called experts is going to be of any help. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Springer, I’m afraid I have no idea.’
She’s not easily discouraged. ‘You haven’t been diagnosed as an epileptic, have you?’ she persists.
‘Never,’ I reply truthfully.
‘What you experienced,’ Dr McAllister cuts in, ‘is a disorder of the nervous system causing loss of consciousness.’ I like the look of the hairy guy but can’t resist a terse response that comes across as more disdainful than it’s meant. ‘I know the symptoms of epilepsy, Doctor.’ I give him a belated smile. His colleagues give Dr McAllister a supercilious look.
Dr Fuessli attempts a rescue. Turning pages in his folder, he comments: ‘Of course you do. Your father’s a doctor, isn’t he?’ I could have been out of the woods had I just kept my mouth shut. But instinctively I reply: ‘Yes, one of them is.’
It’s enough to light up the entire Board. My examiners exchange long meaningful looks then scribble down notes in their folios. I appear to have confirmed their worst fears, yet at the same time provided them with a triumphant breakthrough. That’s how it is with psychiatrists: the more serious or extreme a patient’s condition the greater their excitement. They’ve stumbled on a ‘case’ disturbing and astounding enough to warrant further research. A full-length study or article in The Psychiatric Journal of America beckons, with promises of prestige, promotion and prominence. Excitement is written all over their faces. I must not disappoint them.
Dr Springer tries hard to conceal her exhilaration. She resumes control of the interview. ‘Let me get this straight, Professor. Are you saying you have more than one father?’ I’m pleased to provide her with the answer she’s hoping for.
Calmly I reply: ‘Not counting what you might call father figures, I have three.’ It seems I’ve dropped a bombshell.
Is it a coincidence or could there be a curious kind of plot taking place? I don’t want to become paranoid, but now that I’ve been ordered to give an account of my life — allegedly to restore me to full mental health (as though knowing or remembering one’s life can really guarantee emotional and spiritual wellbeing) — I keep getting letters from people I haven’t seen for half a century: schoolfriends, former lovers and members of what I like to call the Danish side of my family.
A male cousin who sees himself as a kind of official family historian writes to me about Otto Bluschke, my fascist maternal grandfather, born in the Silesian forest near the Polish border, far away from the northern German-Danish town of Flensburg. Despite the fact that he embarrassed at least one part of the family by becoming a passionate Nazi, my grandfather in fact looked, in the words of my cousin, ‘rather Jewish and employed gestures attributed to Jews’. I must confess I have no idea what these ‘gestures’ might be, but my cousin informed me that whenever someone pointed this out to Ortsgruppenführer Bluschke, he replied: ‘My family comes from Silesia, where my father was a senior forester. Have you ever come across a Jewish forester?’
Perhaps it was a need for over-compensation that made him run around town dressed in the brownshirt uniform of the Sturm Abteilung. My grandfather, who was bald and not very tall, looked more like Benito Mussolini. Like his beloved Führer he had a German shepherd dog. Otto Bluschke’s purebred hound was called Janko, Hitler’s was known as Blondie. Everybody in the family knew a black cloud hung over the relationship between Grandfather Bluschke and my father Claus Jürgensen, but no one was prepared to reveal the reason. At one stage my grandmother intimated it had something to do with money lost during the currency reform, but that turned out to be untrue. I assumed it had something to do with my grandfather’s passionate belief in Nazism and Hitler, but only discovered the real reason from my father in Caracas, many years later. I’ll come back to it. The strange and unsettling thing is that when my grandfather was subjected to post-war denazification my anti-fascist father wrote him a reference of ‘good conduct’. Did he provide that ideological reference in lieu of some other debt? The problem of Nazism is that its web is almost impossible to penetrate.
My grandfather’s background seems to fit the peculiar tribal culture of many Germans. Clearly the forest still holds an almost sacred position in contemporary German consciousness. Various Teutonic tribes derived their identity from large areas of trees and undergrowth. Caesar’s attempt to invade Germania failed largely because its natives were able to fight the Roman troops in the forests. One of their weapons was pouring hot pitch and sulphur onto the invaders from ancient oaks and other trees. Ironically, having been defeated by such primitive but effective weapons, the Romans stayed west of the Rhine and were unable to civilise the barbaric tribes in their dark forests. This limited influence is reflected in the German language. Just one example: while the old tribes lived in houses without protective windows, near the Rhine where the Romans had a military and cultural presence, fenestrae were introduced — or Fenster, the word modern German has retained. Forests had saved the ancient Germanic tribes, but they were also responsible for Germany’s long lasting inferior cultural development. The historic battle of Teutoburg Forest ( Teutoburger Wald) in 9 AD in which Arminius annihilated the Romans meant the defeat of Roman civilisation on German soil. Once again it was a forest that asserted and defined German identity. In honour of this tradition South Germans to this day have a penchant for wearing variations of the green forester’s Tracht; Bavarian lederhosen also relate back to the dark forest days of tribal life and warfare. It seems my Silesian grandfather’s obsession with uniform and our town’s idyllic forest Marienhölzung expressed a deep-seated, almost instinctive sense of origin and belonging. Every Sunday Otto Bluschke went for a ritualistic walk through the woods of his adopted hometown. Only a few decades ago Germany’s notoriously backward culture of popular music featured a bestseller called ‘A Walk through the Black Forest’. I’m not sure Germans have yet fully emerged from their primeval dark forests.
These revealing snippets of my family’s history may be profoundly disturbing, but I can’t help wondering how and why I’m being provided with them right now while in custody at a psychiatric clinic. How has Humanitas managed to get in touch with my cousin?
My memory of Otto Bluschke has mellowed into that of a pathetic little man who was seeking recognition by