Hamburg 14.6.1998: English Gardens, Cultural Diversity

In Hamburg now after a long tiring drive yesterday from the Oberpfalz. I found myself feeling sick—headachy with stomach upset, perhaps due to a heavy meal of Käsespätzle the evening before. The afternoon before that we gave to rest in the cool rainy weather, after a drive to Waldmünchen to see Herr Ederer, and then to Teunz to get postcards for Steve’s correspondent in Wisconsin, and to Tiefenbach to buy a rug from the Hutterer weaving shop.

In some ways, glad to leave the Bavarian countryside, which I had begun to find oppressive. Perhaps it was that everyone seemed to know our business. But it was even more the sense of being watched, and not always amicably.

The countryside itself is so pretty, though—mystical-seeming in the damp weather. The greens, the tranquility, the small, carefully groomed fields beneath scudding clouds, with villages everywhere the eye looks, are pleasant to see, if not to live in (one senses).

I slept much of the way north so can’t comment much on what we saw. The Bavarian border area, especially the city of Hof, seemed grimy and industrial. The former East German lands had a similar character, with substandard roads and huge fields—a carryover from the Communist period?

Hamburg begins to feel very homelike. After a very happy dinner at Erhard C.’s house last night, (with Wolfram and Karin, Erhard’s daughter and husband, a South African woman, Sandra), we slept long, and awoke to attend a Gottesdienst at the Akademie, followed by Mittagessen prepared by the Akademie students.

Writing now at a café overlooking the Elbe off the Elbchausee’s Wandernweg. Pretty weather, sunny with very brisk winds. Roses and lavender are in full bloom in the gardens of Blankenese, often planted together, with foxgloves, daisies, and poppies gone to see in the terraced gardens behind. The English style everywhere in evidence.

Erhard tells me the Jenischpark near Niendstedt, which he regards as the most beautiful part in Hamburg, once had a French formal garden—apparently when it was a landed gentleman’s estate in the 18th century. In the 19th century, a Scottish gardener was brought in to replant it in English style.

Erhard also tells me that when the Jews were expelled from Spain after 1492, many came here, and laid a foundation for Hamburg’s economic vitality and cultural diversity. As he put it, Grosse Freiheit in Altona is no accident: here, Protestant, Catholic, and Jew worshiped side by side in an atmosphere of freedom of conscience.

He also told me of a paper he’s written about a baron who had an estate northeast of Hamburg, who, in the 18th century, brought black slaves from St. Thomas to be educated in various trades for which it was difficult to find white laborers willing to go to the Caribbean. These slaves were Moravians, who worshiped in Altona, and were baptized on the baron’s estate.

Yesterday, driving into Hamburg, signs everywhere reading, “Wir sind auch Familie,” and demanding adoption rights for gays and lesbians. Wolfram tells us these were connected to a mass rally for gays and lesbians held yesterday.

Hamburg 6.1.94: Red Wigs and Booming Voices

En route to Stuttgart, i.e., to Besigheim-Ottmarsheim, where Steve’s cousin Ludwig Sponer lives. Leaving W. and K. difficult. What first-rate human beings and wonderful friends they are—and to have hosted us with such welcome for so many days. I have no doubt we often tried their nerves.

Our night on the town of 3 Jan. turned out not to be much. At Café Gnosa, we met two of S.W.’s friends, a half-German, half-Honduran young man named Siegfried, and a German named Björn. Last names were proffered, but I never quite get German surnames when I hear them, so I stuck with deciphering the first two names.

Desultory, not unpleasant, chat around the table. I was closest to Björn, who told me he has an English boyfriend and wants to learn English, so we practiced away. He’s a baker from some little town in Schleswig-Holstein, and we discussed working conditions in Germany, stress, coming out (both Siegfried and Björn are in a coming-out group with S.), and our relationships with our families.

Siegfried said he has been expelled from his family, who blame Germany for making him queer. His father is the Salvadoran, and thus into machismo, and cannot have a son who does not (as he feels) perfectly and narcissistically reflect his own impeccable masculinity. Yet Siegfried has a lesbian sister, so the family had already dealt with homosexuality . . . .

After Gnosa, a horrible meal in a urine-smelling Chinese restaurant in St. Georg, then a walk on the Reeperbahn. We parked on Grosse Freiheit, the bawdiest of all Reeperbahn streets, and walked on it first, disappointing the barkers outside the show: “Live f—k on stage. Come in!” As we passed them without coming inside, they made rude comments (now in German, whereas their come-hither invitations were English) to our backs.

It was raining, and miserable, so we rather quickly walked to a gay bar that is a favorite of S.’s—something with a Plattdeutsch name, Toom something or other. But regulars call it Katrina’s, after its owner, a transvestite named Katrine, who was tending bar that evening. She’s a matronly, huge thing with a dowdy red wig and the kind of dress any village Hausfrau might wear, who speaks in a booming bass voice.

The bar itself was shabby and cozy, with lots of red this and that and the old battered wood settles Germans seem to love in cafés and bars. It was surprisingly quiet for a gay bar full of people (not that I am any expert: I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I’ve been to a gay bar). There were both men and women, and the place was so smoky that I could hardly breathe after a few minutes.

German gay men: hulking, many of them, with severe haircuts, and often with ugly glasses. An air of suppressed, barely curbed aggressiveness. Lots of men at the bar blowing obligatory smoke through their noses.

But the other side of the coin is that many are also fresh-faced, innocent looking, fetchingly androgynous—often far younger looking than they actually are. Even straight German men can look and act this way, which might lead an adventurer to jump to conclusions that could be quite unfortunate, since I sense more and more that the heritage of German patriarchal militarism causes German men to repudiate homosexual advances decisively and even violently.