the nurses removed the bandages from my eyes was only the first stage on my arduous journey from darkness to light.
Years later, a friend gave me a book entitled An Anthropologist on Mars.17 The author is the late British neurologist Oliver Sacks, who describes complex clinical pictures in his numerous popular science books with the intention of not losing sight of the people concerned and of recognizing the individual circumstances behind each illness. He accepts long journeys in order to visit the patients in their home environment and to interact with them privately. But Sacks does not go beyond the role of the benevolent observer. After all, he is a doctor and therefore primarily interested in clinical pictures.
In the mid-1990s, Sacks reported that in the last few centuries up to the 1980s, there were only about a dozen people who were freed from their blindness by a successful operation at an advanced age, or better: who came to see. Thus, in one of the seven episodes of the aforementioned book, he describes the case of Virgil, who was successfully operated on in the same year as myself, that is in 1991.18 Although Virgil and I were about the same age at the time of the surgery, our stories were very different.
One reason for this is the initial situation: Virgil was not only severely visually impaired, but was considered to be completely blind. In addition, he had numerous serious pre-existing medical conditions. Above all, however, he was indifferent, if not hostile, to the operation that his fiancée had urged him to undergo. Virgil did practice, for example with toys, to be able to classify objects better. But one has to deal with the same perceptions in reality over and over again until the brain can interpret the visual input accurately and assign meaning to it. It seems as if learning by doing had been an enormous psychological burden for Virgil. I also found it difficult to repeat the same processes—with slight variations—several times, but it was manageable, especially when I could see progress. Above all, however, I was aware that it was a matter of building a new identity if you did not want to become a blind person who could see. Ultimately, the psychological disposition is decisive.19
Sacks is primarily interested in medical and psychological facts; he visits Virgil in his hometown together with a colleague in order to question him and perform a series of tests. In my opinion, the conclusions he draws from the cases presented in the literature are too negative. Sacks is always talking about the patients’ problems with their newly acquired sense of sight. It is possible that only the problematic cases were recorded, because Alberto Valvo (1972) proves that there were also positive developments: “Once our patients have acquired visual patterns, and can work with them autonomously, they seem to experience great joy in visual learning … a renaissance of personality … They start thinking about wholly new areas of experience.”20
How I gradually succeeded in bringing the sense of sight in line with other sensory experiences is explained in the following with the help of numerous details, especially those that are particularly relevant for an adequate assessment of eyesight. As far as I know, I am the first to tell you about these strenuous learning processes, including the setbacks, but also the small and large successes, at first hand. Although there are numerous publications dealing with blindness in literature and visual arts21, they cannot be compared with my experiences. In addition, there are the descriptions of blind people themselves. Similar to Helen Keller, most of them report on how they deal with their blindness.
I became acquainted with these reports and stories over time, because when I had completed the literacy course without much problems—also thanks to the prudence of my former primary school teacher—friends and acquaintances overwhelmed me with books written by blind people and about blindness in general.
I was particularly impressed by the description of the French writer Jacques Lusseyran, who went blind at the age of eight. Nevertheless, he joined the French resistance movement during the Second World War. After his liberation from the Buchenwald concentration camp, he published several books. A distant relative had given me his book And there was light: The extraordinary Memoir of a blind hero of the French Resistance in World War II.22
Little by little I also received the literary works of sighted authors, such as The Country of the Blind by Herbert George Wells from the beginning of the 20th century23 or The City of the Blind by José Saramago from the 1990s24, in which blindness is mainly used as a metaphor. However, none of these books has impressed me as much as Lusseyran’s. If you have had to struggle with blindness yourself, you can empathize very well with the story of a blind person.
To my knowledge, there is no autobiographical work to date that tells the story of how tiring, but also how satisfying and rewarding it is to learn to see after decades of blindness or severe visual impairment. Even the book Blinder Galerist (Blind Gallery-Owner) by Johann König does not change this.25 The report that König, son of the well-known art connoisseur and museum director Kasper König, wrote together with Daniel Schreiber, inevitably bears similarities to the descriptions of other blind or visually impaired authors.
But his case is quite different. When Johann König became almost completely blind in the early 1990s due to an accident while playing with a starting pistol, he was already twelve years old. Up to this point, he had intensive contact with visual impressions through his father: Kasper König took him already as a toddler to exhibitions and the museums he directed. The 30-page picture section inside the book bears witness to this. At home, Johann was also surrounded by art connoisseurs and above all by well-known painters and sculptors, who regularly visited the König family—mother Edda was also interested in art. Johann’s sense of sight was therefore already very well developed at the time of the accident.
In the two years after the accident, Johann was operated on more than 30 times, sometimes with minor successes, which never lasted long. Finally, he attended the well-known German Institute for the Blind (BLISTA) in Marburg, where it was now possible to take the Abitur, the qualification granted at the end of secondary school. Living in a boarding school with other blind children and young people was an enrichment for him, as he was able to determine his own life to a large extent—unlike at home. When he had to realize that he would be denied a career as an artist, he decided to open a gallery.
In 2002, shortly before his high school graduation, he founded a gallery called Johann König, Berlin, which was initially in the red, but within five years became one of the most important international galleries for modern art. After innumerable further operations, a special corneal transplantation procedure finally leads to a remarkable success in 2007. König recovers 30–40% of his sight. He describes his joy and relief, but has no difficulty whatsoever with his regained vision. The main focus of his book is on modern art, the art business and especially on his professional activity as a gallery-owner. These descriptions make up more than seventy percent of the text. König’s message is: Even with such serious limitations, you can make it! He substantiates this statement with numerous quotes from recent literature. Johann König is not a blind gallery-owner; he was blind when he founded his gallery and ran it with a team of employees from 2002 to 2007, the year of his most successful operation to date.
Up to now nobody before me has ever described what learning to see means for the assessment of the sense of sight and the perception of each individual. The fact that I have largely succeeded in learning to see is certainly due to the fact that I was not completely blind, but could distinguish light from dark. On the other hand, I would not have come so far without the empathy and support of my husband. Oliver Sacks also reports on the corresponding learning processes, using Virgil as an example, but at second hand. In addition, Sacks takes on the role of the observer, as already mentioned. He shows great understanding for Virgil, but, like all the patients he describes, he does not give him any psychological help. Yet appropriate psychotherapeutic treatment should have been offered long ago—in connection with this kind of surgery.
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