left and the right. Where’s it happening? Right here. When? Right now. From around the corner of the train station several hundred demonstrators march behind a large banner: Wir sind für Deutschland / Wir sind das Volk (“We are for Germany / We are the nation”). White haired women in sensible shoes walk alongside chic-sas in spiked heels; guys in army jackets and leather jackets, wearing jeans or dressier slacks; young and old, yuppies and geezers, all are marching in a right-wing demonstration against immigration. From out of nowhere ten or so young men and women ride up on bicycles wearing t-shirts that read “Refugees Welcome” in English, some wearing string bags with the same logo, a yellow silhouette on black depicting a fleeing family. The anti-demonstration protestors start screaming anti-fascist slogans, some in English, some in German: “Say it now / Say it clear / Refugees are welcome here!” “Nazis out! / Gegen Nazis!” The demonstrators respond by singing patriotic songs. Birds are flipped and screams exchanged. As the march leaves the train station area, the cycling leftists take off in the opposite direction, obviously hip to the detours created by the blockades and determined to navigate around the streets of Mitte in pursuit of the nationalist xenophobic parade. I follow.
Bitte, I call out, pulling alongside a hale lefty chap riding with his girlfriend to the next parade point, Ich bin ein amerikanisher Schriftsteller, ich versuche über die Krise zu schreiben. Sprechen sie Englisch? He spits back, Nie! ‘Schuldigung! They speed up. And why would they want to talk to a bulky American writer pushing the pedals? Determined, I pursue from a block behind, and when I catch up to them they have already unfurled a “Refugees Welcome” banner of the same design as their shirts and bags. The activist swag makes it look like a team sport. I think of Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Casualty,” and his noting the graffiti scrawled on a wall in war-torn Derry, keeping track of the deadly score: “PARRAS THIRTEEN, the wall said, BOGSIDE NIL.” Another war with too many sponsors. Well, not a civil war here in Germany, not yet, one hopes not ever; but the proxy wars of the Middle East, political and often divided along religious lines (as it had been in Ireland) now intensified with Russia on the scene in Syria, a country lost in full-blown civil war.
As if it weren’t murderous enough. A mixed group of young and old leftists move en masse into the street and lie down, the demonstration still several blocks away. Thirty seconds later, police pick them up and move them aside like sacks of potatoes. I have never seen so many cops and vans for such a modest demonstration; it seems as if a cop is there for every two marchers. A line of them creates a human fence between the right-wing marchers and the leftist protestors. From a short distance I peer into the neutral cold eyes of the most stunning policewoman I have ever seen. Without a helmet her glossy brown ponytail creates an athletic look, sehr sportlich. I notice that the thick power-beard on the stony face of the policeman next to her makes a good match. A handsome couple. I picture them on a sunny day at an open air firing range. I try my bad German again with a different set of young protestors on their bikes. Yes, they speak some English. Yes, I can talk to them. Yes, following them is okay. (We speak in a mixture of English and German.)
There’s no single umbrella or even sizable organization of activists in Berlin; everything is improvisation as the situation develops, small groups posting information on Facebook, Twitter, and the like, with very short notice—from distributing the marching routes of nationalist demonstrations, to regrouping the Oplatz effort, opening up homes to refugee families, picking them up in Hungary in private cars and driving them across the border, to protesting the very idea of national borders altogether—Keine Grenzen!
Are you guys putting up refugees in your apartments? Philip and Johanna, both in their mid-twenties, give little smiles at my naïve question. No, we don’t have room to do something like that, says Philip, we don’t have the space or the money. I am doing an internship and she is a student. Our friends are the same. Do you think that the crisis, die Krise, is creating new feelings against immigrants, or is it waking up feelings that have always been there? The feelings are old and new, he says, but they have always been there, deep down. Do you see more young people such as yourselves joining the right in their efforts to stop the refugees? Yes, always more young people are joining the right, they are open about it now. I point to a cop carrying a large video camera. Even the cops are filmmakers now, I say. Oh, ja, everyone likes movies, he says. They look at each other. We’re going now. And they ride down Ackerstrasse, further south into the tough East Berlin neighborhoods of Friedrichshain.
I look around. I’m in the area between Alexanderplatz and Rosenthalerplatz that Alfred Döblin brings to life in his 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, a physically brutal and idiomatically vital story unlike any capital-centered work in Anglophone modernism—the rough pathos of Frank Norris, the camera-eye technique of Dos Passos, and something like Joyce’s feeling for city life at street level. Döblin’s talent consummate with his environment, he was one gold standard in the measure of adequate attention.
Powerful thick rock music, abrasive fast melodic, is blasting from a single large stereo speaker on Ackerstrasse pointed at the demonstrators marching along Torstrasse. I listen for a minute and approach a leathered-up sixty-something guy in horn-rims and with a gray ponytail standing outside the storefront where the speaker is plugged in. What’s this music, I say, it’s great. Ja, this is a band. My German is bad, I say, but I’ll try. He smiles faintly; he’ll humor me. What is the band? Freygang Band, he says. I don’t know it, I say. Oh ja, started in the DDR; it’s playing here tonight. I look up at the sign over the club’s door, Shockoladen (Chocolates). What time? Eight. I look at my watch. It’s only five. Are you in the band? Yes. He gives me a little smile. What instrument do you play? Lead guitar. His head angles toward the door. Do you want to come in, he says.
The club owner pops a Berliner Pilsner, a local favorite, and puts it in front of me. Egon downs a shot of vodka and lights a Galouise. (We speak in a mixture of German and English). So, you’re a writer, he says. I’m a poet, I’m trying to write about die Flüchtlingekrise; I think you probably have a good perspective. When did the band start playing, I ask, opting for a crabwalk towards my agenda.
Freygang Band is the kind described as seminal. Although it came together in 1977 in East Berlin, inspired by American bands such as the Rolling Stones, Kinks, and MC5, they were instrumental in more than one way in broadcasting the energy, attitude, and style of American music in East Berlin at that time. From behind the wall, der Mauer, American music of the 1960’s and 70’s was hard to hear, but once heard impossible to forget; and it inspired Egon Kenner to somehow find an instrument and play it. He still plays the guitar an American musician gave him in 1973. The band is a seductive fusion of rock & blues, hardcore attitude, political lyrics, and an open free approach to playing without any jaded irony. Freygang Band is still earnest, serious, straight-ahead. But, as I would hear that night, they don’t preach, they just destroy through total commitment and conviction. The structures are simple, the execution resolute, the vision epic with an awareness of history’s long view; but like great poetry, it starts with the sound. (The sound and the sentiments that fueled it earned them persecution in DDR-days that only amplified their bona fides as artists deemed verboten by the state).
With a second round my German is definitely improving, as is Egon’s English.
And what about the refugees? Things are changing always, he says, the most important thing is solidarity. No one can say what’s going to happen. 200 years of colonialization of one kind or another have led us to this moment. But when immigrants come, he continues, the insularity of ethnic groups also becomes a problem. Andreas Kick, the keyboardist, joins us. I ask him what he makes of the reports of violence between Syrians and Afghans in the crowded shelters in Leipzig, Bonn, Hamburg, Kassel, and elsewhere. Of course, they will fight, it is too crowded. Now the right can say, you see, they are violent, we must control them. This is just the way it happens. I say, young people forget this history. Egon smiles wryly and adds, old people also forget this history.
More of the band shows up, along with the merchandise. Egon gives me a copy of their new cd, Tanz Global, and I unfold the lyric sheet. There I find a photograph of the legendary East German poet, Bert
