Five Weeks at Humanitas. Manfred Jurgensen
a concert pianist and strong supporter of the Danes, was sent to a concentration camp for performing Mendelssohn in public. Home provided little shelter for adults or children. When I was old enough to attend St Mary’s on Sundays, nothing made as much sense to me at that time as being told about original sin.
The first few years of my life remain shrouded in a haze of mist. While Mother was crazy with fear over her deaf son, my wet nurse Marie continued to look after me. When she left us I became a motherless child.
Like me, my deaf brother Claus had a difficult childhood, albeit for different reasons. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t hear; it seems the tension surrounding his very existence had affected his health in other ways. His main problem was that he could not keep his food down. My grandfather called him a ‘ruminant’. When I asked him what that meant he explained Claus was a ‘rehasher’. I loved my brother from the very beginning, sensing the precariousness of his life. He was a beautiful child, clearly the most attractive of us all. Dark-haired and brown-eyed, he looked like a gypsy. Despite his handicap he later grew into an athletic build and excelled in sport. We’ve remained good friends to this day. He’s retired now and lives with his deaf wife Sigrid in a neat terrace outside Hamburg. They have two adult children: Stefan, an IT specialist, has no hearing problem, and his younger sister Cathrin, a psychologist, wears a hearing aid. Both have ‘healthy children’ of their own.
I spent much of my childhood with Claus, mainly around the harbour. We spoke a sign language that is now no longer in use, but whatever its shortcomings it was articulate enough to express our love for each other. I remember my brother placing his hands on the piano to feel the vibrations when I played. In a way, that was how we communicated in sign language. It also became a kind of secret code in which we could say things that others, including my mother, wouldn’t understand. My older brother Holger and my younger sister Astrid also used sign language with Claus, but their range and knowledge of the code was limited. In family mythology my mother had an alibi to prove her son could not be deaf: the infant reacted to air-raid sirens.
Saturdays or Sundays, Claus and I would watch a game of football. As teenagers we both joined the local club Flensburg 08. I was thrilled to see how gifted my brother was as a player. School separated us. He had to attend a boarding school for the deaf in Schleswig and came home over weekends. I’ve only been to Schleswig twice in my life: once to visit my brother Holger in hospital — he’d injured himself as a soldier of the new ‘bourgeois’ German army, as it called itself — and on another more upsetting occasion to attend a Christmas celebration at Claus’ school. I have never been so distressed as when I listened to a group of deaf boys reciting Silent Night in the auditorium. Was I the only one in the audience (my parents couldn’t or wouldn’t come) mindful of the fact that not only nights were silent for them? The sounds they made were like an open audio-wound, a croaky and sobbing cry. I felt heartbroken over the weeping appeal of those boys who were celebrating just like us. Their performance has remained the most memorable Christmas of my life. For it was a festivity for them, as it was for those of us who had come to join them.
The wonderful thing about my brother Claus is that to the best of my knowledge he did not have to suffer the ignominies of so many other challenged men and women in society. After some deliberation over which profession to choose — my brother had strong artistic leanings, especially as a draughtsman — he joined a large publishing company as a graphic artist. One of his tasks was to retouch the outlines of mainly female celebrities on popular magazine covers. He enlarged or reduced the size of breasts, albeit only on commercial graphic and photographic reproductions. I understand he found it an inspiring and well-paid job. Socially too Claus had few problems. He may not have been able to hear the music, but that didn’t prevent him from being an excellent dancer. I believe in the end his partners didn’t even have to tell him what kind of dance it was. It took him a couple of seconds to recognise the movements of others and follow their lead. Now in his late sixties, he’s still a very handsome sporty man who spends a lot of his time travelling.
In 1992 we spent Christmas and New Year with Claus and his wife in Brisbane and Sydney. They both took an immediate liking to Australia. Christmas Eve festivities at Brisbane’s Southbank included a long procession of parents and children accompanied by live camels, sheep and other animals. Our visitors were delighted. Again and again they commented on the friendliness of the Australian people. It was a Christmas very unlike the one so long ago in the Schleswig School for the Deaf; my deaf relatives were fully integrated and made welcome in a foreign land. We watched as they met deaf Australians. Foolishly we had assumed they would speak the same language. Only then did we learn about Auslan, the sign language preferred by the Australian deaf community. One example of the different interpretation of codes was the sign for bagpipe: for the visitors it signified chicken. On New Year’s Eve they ran into a large group of Australian deaf at the Moreton Bay island of Tangalooma where we went to participate in feeding the dolphins. It was a joy to watch the ‘natives’ and ‘foreigners’ communicate with such obvious sympathy and exuberance. I’m not at all certain Australia’s so-called multicultural society has as yet achieved similar social harmony and warmth.
I think it might be appropriate to briefly interrupt my friend’s narrative and insert a short paragraph from a newspaper article of 15 July 1945. It reads: ‘The US military government in Germany has announced in Frankfurt that since Germany’s unconditional surrender on 7 and 8 May more than 70 000 former officials of the Nazi regime have been arrested in the US occupation zone and sent to various internment camps. The following persons are subject to automatic arrest: members of the SS, SD and Gestapo, further Ortsgruppenführer (local Nazi group leaders) and higher party officials, former burgomasters, Kreis and district leaders of the NSDAP as well as senior public servants and officers of the Armed Forces.’
I offer no commentary except to say that this piece of historical information might assist in assessment of the role my friend’s grandfather may have played in Manfred’s life. I can’t believe he’ll keep quiet about it.
Who is this guy interrupting our talk? Or am I imagining it? Are the shrinks right — am I beginning to hear voices? Oh, it’s the intercom again! I thought I was promised peace and quiet. What’s the matter with this contraption? There goes the buzzer again!
‘Hello? This is room forty. I’m the new arrival. Hello!’ Is this some kind of psychological experiment, a challenge to my nerves or just plain bloody rude? I should have hung up immediately. Or better still, not answered at all. What are they trying to do to me in this allegedly humane institute?
Oh, I see! This time it was the door!
‘Yes?’ What could an attractive young woman want from me? If this is what Humanitas nurses look like, I may have to reconsider my response to staff. She doesn’t even wear a uniform, but a rather elegant knee-length yellow dress. My God! A yellow dress and her black hair! She’s a stunner!
‘Good evening, Professor! I’m Geraldine Stearn. Would you like me to accompany you to dinner? It’s being served right now. I thought perhaps you might enjoy company on your first night.’
Is this a trick, a trap to make me say or do something I don’t want to? Fancy using a beautiful woman to lure me into a false sense of security! It may not be the most ethical way of forcing a patient to reveal himself, but there’s no denying what’s-her-name really is striking.
‘There’s no need to wear a jacket,’ she informs me with an unnerving smile. ‘Just take your key. I’ll wait at the door.’ She actually steps back at bit to indicate she’s ready to go. Suddenly I hear myself say: ‘I won’t be a minute’, as I turn round and fetch the card that opens the door to my suite. Out in the corridor the young woman beckons to me good-naturedly as she leads the way. What makes me think she might actually take my hand?
Trying to say something, I offer a rather foolish and self-righteous comment. ‘I thought you’d know the rooms don’t actually have keys. They must have found