imitation. But if the pictures are really outgrowths of Martin himself, then it seems to me his path in life is already decided.
Martin didn’t only draw, he also wrote, in fact nonstop: letters to parents, sisters, neighbors, au pairs, grandparents, aunts, friends. He wrote them on his personal stationery, which Petra, one of our parents’ artist friends, had designed for him, with an illustration of Martin running with books under his arm. More often than not he drew his own pictures on the page, too—pictures of the village, pictures of skiing, self-portraits. He personalized every envelope by making a little drawing, and even the sender’s name was turned into an artwork: a little house with his name as the roof. The kippenbergerization of the world had begun.
Our mother was the same way. She couldn’t draw at all (just like her daughters), not even a stick figure, but she glued. All the presents she wrapped for weeks before Christmas—for friends in the East, godchildren, relatives—were decorated with little pictures: flowers, angels, and whatever else she ran across and cut out. The man at the post office drove her crazy about it: “That is not allowed (he says). Why not??? (I ask). rules. What rules?” She called him Fussbudget but bewitched him with words and homemade pear jelly (which no one in the family liked anyway) until he accepted the packages after all.
Martin never wrote a word about Inspections of the Ears or work duty in his letters—maybe because he knew that the people in charge of the school read them. He just wrote about slide shows and movies, games of cowboys and Indians or Lego, plays and soccer games (“We won 1-0 for us”); he wrote about another child’s birthday, where he put on eight layers of clothes, one on top of another, and looked as fat as our neighbor Mrs. Böhler. In a school play, he was cast as a deaf grandmother: “I sure looked funny. Totally like Frillendorfer trash.” Even if he didn’t read much himself, the children were read Greek myths; in summer there was gym class in the forest, and skiing every day in the winter. “Wolf-Dieter made a real plank-salad. In real words: he broke his skis.” Martin sent his skiing certificate (second prize) home so that Mother could keep it safe. One time Mr. Tetens, the housemaster, brought ice cream for everyone, as much as they wanted. “And to finish he gave orders: ‘Clean the plate with your tongue!’ We all cheered and started licking away like pigs.”
Along with his experiences, he wrote made-up stories and illustrated them with drawings. He gave our mother an elephant story for her birthday—very dramatic, with Martin himself appearing as a character—to be continued in a week. “With five colorfull pictures and three sentimentil drawings.”
He also told the story of the Kennedy assassination as a cops and robbers story and illustrated it with a coffin. He kept this letter to the end of his life and reprinted it in Through Puberty to Success :
He was shot 3 times in the head. He was broght right away to the hospital. He died. The shotts came from the villa. Oswald did it. Everybody was sad. Later a nightclub owner shott im. He’s in jail. – The End.
That’s what it aproximatly said in the paper.
Your, Kerl.
“The spelling was still extremely strange, to tell you the truth,” our mother said, “but the style of his letters was often amazing.”
He wasn’t just writing letters—he was writing them for an audience and hoping for good reviews. “I’m always very happy when someone says: ‘That letter was very good.’” At the end of the letters, after “God Bless,” there was usually a P.S. with his requests: for example, Babs’s brown parka and the red one from Zandvoort, and three cakes and a visit from Grandma for his birthday, plus, “dear Mommy, send me sweets becuase I dont have any sweets and I have to just look wile the others eat theres.”
But studying was still not his thing. Once when he was sick in bed, he decided he wanted to learn English but “I always fall asleep and dream about ice cream and marcipan.” “He’s a treasure,” our mother said, “even if he’s not a treasure who’s ready for middle school.”
HONNEROTH
In April 1965, Martin graduated from Tetenshof, which only went up to fifth grade. For the next three years he went to Honneroth, a boarding school near Altenkirchen in the Westerwald. The contrast could not have been greater. Honneroth had just opened, and the children lived not in the idyllic Black Forest but in what was practically a construction site. Running water was still being installed, and barracks were only gradually being replaced with real buildings. And the children were expected to do serious work to help out. There were “Work Days” instead of classes over and over again: planting trees and flowers, building huts. Afternoons were given over to “practical work,” in other words, pulling weeds. “Martin took good part again in the practical work,” the housemaster praised. Martin saw it otherwise: “During the practical work I sometimes have the feeling that I’m only working for Mr. Hoffmann. I’ve been working on the new school building for days. We clean and sweep and wipe, but always for the Hoffmanns.”
Any student who talked back was “sent to jail,” which meant working after school or running laps around the dining hall before class while the other students had breakfast. Our sister Bine was jealous—she would have liked to do that. She was with Martin at Honneroth for a year, one of ten girls with the seventy boys. It was an adventure for her. But she was never allowed to do laps for punishment: in the end, she was always excused from punishment because she was too nice and had too sunny a disposition. Not Martin. He got “jail” all the time (for example, when he made himself a little soup with the immersion heater) and was always being slapped. As our mother wrote: since “the missus” apparently looks funny when she’s mad, “our Kerl has to laugh and then he gets even more punishment, which he doesn’t seem to mind. That’s how you’re victimized when you have a sense of comedy.”
He himself told Wiltrud Roser, “I’d really like to write a book this summer, if I can. About evil.”
There was no Dr. Groh in Altenkirchen, no one who supported Martin or expected anything from him. The new housemaster’s evaluation comes across as rather unfriendly: at Easter in 1966, Herr Hoffmann wrote (“not for the pupil’s eyes”) that “we have unfortunately not made much progress in the battle against Martin’s disorderliness. He is still receiving demerits for failure to keep his notebooks clean and proper, and he continues to strew his things through all the rooms in the home.” His chaos would cost him: anyone who left something lying around in the hall was penalized a dime. “Martin has to turn in the most dimes. Perhaps the parents could help by not giving Martin quite as many toys to bring along as they have done. It is also hardly possible for us to protect the sometimes very valuable toys from being used by the other students, and then Martin is often sad when this or that nice toy is damaged.” But, he conceded, “In spite of Martin’s disorderliness it’s impossible not to like the boy for his original and cheerful sense of humor.”
Martin called Honneroth “my horrorschool.” “It stinks, it’s so boring,” he wrote to Sebastian Roser, and he looked forward to finally seeing his friend again, “doing stupid things and taking people in.” Boredom tormented him constantly, and any change of scene was welcome, even in the form of Chancellor Kiesinger. Martin’s report of the politician’s visit in 1967 is very dramatic: a helicopter landing, lots of pushing and jostling, Martin rushing to the car and managing to shake hands with him “as he ran by.” On the other hand, a visit to the circus was “Garbage. A miserable circus. The acrobats fell into the nets 3x in a row, the clowns were totally unfunny and stupid.” What got on his nerves the most were the teachers who laughed anyway.
His confirmation class “makes me throw up.” The best thing about it was that he could go into the city, check out shops, eat French fries and ice cream, and go to the fair. Sunday services were absolutely the only chance to get away from school. He spent the money for the church on candy. Many of the students
