Five Weeks at Humanitas. Manfred Jurgensen
overzealousness or expediency, an obsession with accuracy or truth? Had it proved difficult to agree on the precise moment I was brought into the world? As if life were calibrated only by time!
As I left my place of birth I was in a joyful, pensive mood. It amused me to think hospital staff in 1940 had gone out of their way to avoid recording a birth at the stroke of midnight. Most likely they decided against all logic that twelve o’clock at night belonged neither to one day nor the other. If I was indeed born at precisely that time, it remained undocumented. I rather liked that. People know far too much about each other, only to draw wrong conclusions. My date of birth has forever remained classified information. It seemed midnight wasn’t a popular time either for mother and child or medical staff. I have to remember it was during the war. It seems strange that throughout my life I’ve never met anyone with whom I shared my ambivalent time of birth.
My grandmother, who coincidentally was also born on 26 March, referred to me as ‘the midnight child’. (I don’t know her precise time of birth, but that’s not surprising.) To distinguish me from my three-year-old brother Holger, I became Mother’s ‘war baby’. The name stuck. It was the one given by her before I was baptised.
Being a peacetime child was considered superior, comparable to the quality of pre-war goods. Ironically only Peacetime Holger would later join the new German army, and despite turning into a disciplinarian father, one of his teenage sons would commit murder. The year after I was born my deaf younger brother Claus arrived, and seven years later the family celebrated the birth of my sister Astrid — a remarkable record for a husband and wife living separate lives. Giving birth in Nazi Germany to three boys attracted public recognition. The Führer awarded the Nordic breeder the title of ‘German Mother’ and promptly sent her a signed copy of the New Testament. I was thereby sanctified as one of ‘Hitler’s children’. Much of what happened to me in childhood and adolescence I share with a particularly unfortunate generation referred to generically even now, not only outside Germany, as ‘Hitler’s children’. It is a curse I found difficult to bear long before I fell in love and spent eleven years with a woman who confided in me that she was brought into this world in the notorious Nazi breeding camp Lebensborn.
Don’t ask me to explain these things. My own subsequent enquiries into my family were met with evasive answers like ‘Those were special times’. During the war my parents occasionally met in health-resort hotels. By the time my father rejoined civilian life my childhood was over.
Wait a moment! Something makes me stop here. What is it? I listen for sounds. I thought I heard something. Did the intercom ring again? Standing in the middle of the room, I’m trying hard to concentrate. I must have made a mistake. All’s quiet. In fact, it’s eerily still. Not a noise anywhere. The whole of Humanitas is silent. Why should that unsettle me? I look around. There’s no one here. So who was I chattering with? Perhaps I wasn’t talking at all, merely thinking aloud. As Dr Fuessli, the University psychiatrist, warned me: ‘It’s all in the mind.’
Let me cut in here with a few factual remarks regarding my colleague’s place of birth. Who am I? Well, you may find this hard to believe, unless you accept that sometimes life throws up what might be called pointed coincidences, but my name is Manfred, too. Not really an unusual name for our generation. Like my colleague, I am a literary historian. Barely a year older, I grew up during the same post-war period. Although I don’t live in Australia, we’ve met in various countries, at conferences, congresses and during stints as visiting professors. Over the years we’ve come to know each other quite well. I consider the other Manfred my friend. When I heard about what had happened I immediately contacted the University of Basle and was referred to the ‘rest home’ or sanatorium of Humanitas. In a confidential interview its director, Dr Springer, explained to me that the newly arrived overseas patient had been asked to keep a kind of diary in which it was hoped he would record important events of his life as well as some more immediate thoughts about his present state of mind. She promised to provide me with copies of my friend’s self-portrayal, a document designed to form a vital part of the patient’s medical history. As yet I haven’t seen my colleague at Humanitas. In the judgment of Dr Springer it was far too early for that. She was adamant that in his present state, the patient could not under any circumstances be exposed to outside influence. She’d at first called it ‘interference’, but when I looked at her accusingly she settled for ‘influence’. I’m not sure what that means. I have no wish to interfere or influence. Manfred is completely unaware of my presence, and of course he knows nothing about my permission to read his papers. He probably hasn’t even started on them. But in time it may allow me to offer a few comments that might prove helpful to the doctors and anyone else who may end up reading these pages.
Where was I? Ah, yes, my friend’s colourful time and place of birth! If he has started his diary, I’m sure he’s talked about it. Like many European border towns, Flensburg had a colourful past. Although no longer as populous as during Manfred’s childhood, when the influx of war refugees from the East bolstered its inhabitants to over 100,000, it is still the largest provincial city of Schleswig. Throughout its history the ancient city of Flensburg frequently transformed itself from being Denmark’s southernmost port to Germany’s northernmost harbour.
Three historical events may serve as illustration: 1848 to 1850 marks the so-called First German-Danish War, fought over Denmark’s intention to integrate Schleswig and Holstein into the Danish nation state; in 1864 the Second German-Danish War resulted in Denmark’s surrender of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg to Prussia and Austria; in 1920 a plebiscite determined North Schleswig’s annexation to Denmark. Flensburg was immediately affected by these conflicts and changes. As a result its population always included either a strong Danish or German minority. The miracle was that whilst at certain times this sponsored a dualistic culture, it never led to a divided city. I believe that Denmark’s conciliatory foreign policy did much to foster this.
Flensburgers have a reputation for being quirky, cheerful and quick-witted. Many speak a jaunty, sassy Low German dialect characterised by an almost Anglo-Saxon irony and self-deprecation. The reference to Anglo-Saxon isn’t coincidental, for the province of Angeln south of Flensburg marks the Angles’ place of origin, the Angles being the North German tribe who settled in England in the fifth century. Which, by the way, means the English county of East Anglia clearly is a misnomer, as its geographical location is west of the original Anglia. Most daily conflicts in the town of Flensburg are resolved by exchanges of witty and disarming local expressions. Some local jokes may be a bit crude, yet their tenor can only be described as flirtatious and pacifying. As we’re both philologists, I’ve often suggested my colleague should write a study on the verbal culture of his place of birth. It might inspire others to adopt a similar resolution of divided loyalties.
Sorry about the intrusion. I merely wanted to put my friend’s thoughts and feelings into a biographical context. After all, it seems that’s what the staff of Humanitas is asking him to do: write a profile, a CV that might add up to his life story. Wasn’t it Disraeli who said: ‘Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory’. I only hope the psychotherapists are familiar with this and if so, bear in mind the second part of the quotation.
On 26 March 1940 Adolf Hitler decided to invade Denmark and Norway in a Blitzkrieg he called ‘ Weserübung’. Average day temperatures in Flensburg were around 3° Celsius. A fortnight later German troops entered my place of birth and occupied Denmark without a declaration of war. The day before I was born, Easter Monday, the British Navy intercepted the Turkish passenger ship Satarya carrying 2000 Jews on its way to Palestine. On Easter Sunday 5000 Lithuanian Jews were settled in British colonies. These dates and events are verifiable historical incidents, but if coincidences can sometimes speak a symbolic sign language of their own, they functioned as powerful portents for my future life.
I’m reluctant to write this down. Anything you write can be held against you. I don’t trust shrinks as readers of literature, least of all memoirs. If Freud was right