Heart of the Matter

25cm x 13 cm x 7.5 cm

 

Description

Inlaid wooden music box with led lining, mirror, white linen fabric, pin, miniature iron

 

Themes, Comments and Storylines

The German writer Erich Kästner tells a story of his Berlin flat being bombed in 1944. All his possessions are gone. His immediate thought goes to the loss of his books. This is a time of public book burnings, his own books have been burned by the Nazis, and he won't be able to replace his collection that has been burned now in his flat. But later, anticipating the visit of his mother who comes to bring the washing, he realized that it is the textile items that she has bought with her hard owned money for him over the years, the towels, sheets, table linen, shirts and blankets, her pride, care and sacrifice materialized in neat piles, that have been the hardest loss to bear - they have been touched by feeling that makes their loss unbearably sad.

 “Three thousand books, eight suits, some manuscripts, all the furniture, two typewriters, memories in all sizes and several hair colours, the suitcases, the hats, the files, the rock hard salami in the larder, the toothbrush, the chrysanthemum in the vase and the telegram on the desk: 'arriving 16 early anhalter station delivering clean washing personally because of parcel ban mum.”

 He tried to save one of his typewriters, what he thinks he will miss most are his books, some letters, a few photos and feelings.

“And then the bed linen, the shirts, the embroidered handkerchiefs, the ties that mother gave to me every year for Christmas. The proud joy of giving, which she ironed back into them after each wash day. That's also burnt. I used to think, things like that be burnt. One has to experience first before one can comment, on one's own body. Or on one's own underlinen. Well."

 He wonders what to do with the house keys - he is reluctant to just throw them away. He meets his mother at the station and tells her about his flat - everything is gone.

“Then she asked quietly: 'The carpets too?'

It knocked my breath out.

'And the new featherbed?'

 "I explained to her again and as gently as a station hall permits, that the fire did not make any exceptions. The carpets were gone, the new featherbed from th Thiel family in Prague Street, the piano on which I practiced major and minor chords as a child, the furniture from the Deutschen Werkstätten (German Workshops, transl.), the Cotta anniversary edition of Goethe, the onion pattern china, die wine glasses with the thin stem, the bath tub, the net curtains, the hammock together with the balcony…"

His mother insists on seeing the flat, but turns back once she glimpses the extent of the destruction. On the way she cries silently, her face like a mask.

“She was probably looking into the big linen cupboard ,  light green lacquered. At the shelf with the topsheets, undersheets and pillow cases. At the shelf with the carefully stacked shirts. Into the boxes with the accurately folded handkerchiefs. At the neat and tidily piled terry towels, hand towels, wiping cloths.

"And then there were also the two brand new camel hair blankets. From the Salzmanns. And the dark blue dressing gown from the birthday two years ago. And the silver. For twelve people. Bought piece by piece, one after the other. My boy, you know, has a trousseau like a marriageable girl. And every year I add to it. Yes, with my own earnings, of course. I am going to be seventy three in April. But if I couldn't give him presents anymore, I wouldn't enjoy life. Of course he says each time, it's really time for me to stop working now. But I don't want that taken away from me. He is a writer. But he is not allowed to write. His books have been burned. And now the flat…" 

 

From : Erich Kästner, Mama bringt die Wäsche: Aus Berliner Tagebuchblättern, 17.January 1944, retold & translated by S.G.

 

In Strich, Christian (ed) (1978), Das Erich Kästner Lesebuch, Diogenes, Zürich,

p.155 - 159