Munich has few high rise buildings since the city council has been quite adamant they don’t want “a skyline like Frankfurt”. Only a handful of building permits for such buildings have been granted. Unfortunately, however, the sun decided to rise just behind one of those buildings. In desperation we scuttled to the left, then scuttled to the right of the mountain peak to catch a glimpse of the precious orange fireball. Despite the cloudless sky this was clearly a you-can’t-always-see-the-sun-but-it’s-always-there moment. If the sun didn’t exactly play ball and provide us with a metaphysical experience, it certainly did manage to make us laugh. Not such a bad way to start Easter.
When I cycled to our allotment about a week ago, Munich seemed more like the quiet small town I grew up in than the busy cosmopolitan city it is. There was next to no traffic on the main roads and I saw mainly workmen and municipal workers going about their business. At the allotment it was almost eerily quiet apart from the constant whine of a circular saw and the occasional laughter of children.
Now life seems to slowly return to the new normal. More and more people are wearing face masks and mostly people are taking great care to keep the minimum distance. Various shops have opened up again and the streets are getting busier day by day. Many people have seized the chance to become fitter and you see loads of people of all ages jogging during the day. Cycling has become even more popular than it already was. The city’s volunteer site quickly organized a free food and medication delivery, but far more people volunteered for this than were needed. I have heard of people organizing small concerts for their neighbours (who were seated – wide apart – in the street and somebody played an instrument with the windows wide open) but we had little musical entertainment here. A girl sang “Let it go” (from Frozen) in the courtyard but so far that has remained a once off.
My days have changed in curious ways. I find I actually l like to get up early and have begun to meditate in the mornings. I had become so restless that I felt the need to do something to be able to focus again. Working more than ever on our allotment has also helped.
While knitting a jumper for one of my daughters, I listened to some old and new German radio plays. And made a discovery: the plays by Fred von Hoerschelmann, the “father” of the German radio play. The first Hoerschelmann play I listened to was Sizilianischer Frühling (Sicilian spring) about a mafia related murder. At first Sizilianischer Frühling seems a well-made if somewhat clichéd play set in distant Sicily. But towards the end that impression changes completely: Mila Kopp gives a haunting performance as the aunt of the victim. She briefly entertains the idea of telling the visiting brother the truth about the murder in front of everybody in the market square. Suddenly the story has little to do with Sicily, but instead evokes the sometimes claustrophobic atmosphere in postwar Germany. People stuck in small places, not daring to tell the truth about murderers in their midst who seem unassailable.
Hoerschelmann’s best known play, however, is “Das Schiff Esperanza” which has become a modern classic. The play was first broadcast in 1953, but the topic is probably more relevant today than it was then. The Esperanza regularly smuggles people from Germany to the US, or so the hopefuls are led to believe, because although they pay a steep price for the passage, they never arrive. A young sailor joins the ship’s crew. He discovers the captain is his long lost father, but also finds out about the stowaways. The captain has to decide whether he is going to keep his side of the deal this time.
(The text is available by various publishers and has apparently been translated into 20 languages. Unfortunately I haven’t found an English translation so far. If you know of one, please let me know.)